Tag Archives: rhetoric

Antanaclasis

Posted on April 12, 2023 | Leave a comment

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

I wasn’t feeling well. It was like I’d fallen down a wishing well and crash-landed in one foot of water. I had been up all night trying to do my incomes taxes and submit them by today. It should’ve so easy. I had purchased “Turbine Taxes” to do my taxes. On the site it sys “Get your taxes done, and go have fun! $1.00.” Every time I tried to submit my taxes, I got an error message from the IRS saying “Alert! your tax preparation software is part of a plot to overthrow the United States of America.” I didn’t believe it and resubmitted five or six times. It had to be a hoax.

Suddenly there was a pounding on my door and it flew open with the help of a battering ram. “Up against wall subversive scum!” a guy in black with a gas mask on and a MAC-10 pointed at my head yelled. He pointed at my laptop computer and yelled “We are confiscating your little tool of treason and treachery.” “But my taxes aren’t done yet” I said, my voice cracking. “What, are you trying to be funny, wise guy?” he said, tasering me in the neck and stomping on my foot. I passed out for a second and fell to the floor temporarily paralyzed. I could hear them talking as they pretty much packed up my entire house—furniture, carpets, washer-dryer—pretty much everything.

I heard one of them say “‘Turbine Taxes’ rock! This has got be the most sophisticated technologically advanced computer scam ever perpetrated!” I was slowly regaining consciousness. These guys were crooks, not government agents. I was blind-ass angry. I had a loaded Glock in my desk. If I could get my hands on it, I could shoot the shit out of all five of them. Then, I realized they were wearing bullet proof vests. It would have to be head shots. I didn’t know whether I could do it. Then, my cat Worthless started hissing and yowling in the back bedroom. He sounded like a police siren. The robbing bastards yelled “Shit” and ran out the back door empty handed. One of them dropped his weapon! I crawled and grabbed it, got to the back door and pulled the trigger. It went “click.” It wasn’t loaded. The marauders were fake, although the Taser had done a number on me.

I bought Worthless a genuine diamond-studded collar (which he immediately pulled off), a five-pound bag of catnip, an aquarium where he could fish for tropical fish, and a heated kitty bed I knew he would never use. I’d always thought of Worthless as this “thing” who would steal my place on the couch, jump up on my bed at 3:00 am, and puke on the carpet every couple of months. Boy, was I wrong. Worthless had saved our home. I changed his name to Claws.

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

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Antanagoge

Posted on April 11, 2023 | Leave a comment

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

Life is hard. But it’s life. It is better than death. At least that’s what I think sitting here in my big comfy chair with my remote control in one hand and a martini in the other and a full pack of Marlboro 27s on the end table waiting to be smoked. So, what’s hard about this? I’ll tell you: eventually, I’ll have to pull a “Hungry Wolf” TV dinner out of the freezer, read the microwave instructions, and put the damn thing in the microwave. Inevitably, part of the crust is still frozen when I pull it out. So, I have to shove it in for another minute. Then, the unfrozen part gets burned. What a pain in the ass! There’s just so much about making dinner that’s a pain in the ass—that makes it harder than hell just to eat. There’s a lot of other things too.

I have to drag my garbage cans to the street. Why the hell don’t the garbage haulers drive down my driveway and pick my garbage cans up? Same with my mail—up the driveway I go to get it. What the hell is the mail slot on my door for? Jehovah’s Witnesses” pamphlets? I know I’m going to hell—I don’t need a reminder from them. Then, there’s my job.

It’s not very much better than death. I am a professional birthday clown. My stage name Jabber Warble. I wear a baggy red and green striped costume, a blonde wig, and a big red nose. I don’t wear giant shoes. I think they are ridiculous.

I specialize in balloon tricks—winding up hot dog shaped balloons into animals. I specialize in 8-10 year olds: smelly little imps. I do mostly Dachshunds. I bark with a German accent and the kids love it. My most challenging balloon twist is the hot dog on a bun. It takes two balloons. Often the hotdog won’t fit in the bun laying down, so I have to ad lib. For example, I stick the hot dog in the bun at a perpendicular angle and make it fit. I tell the kids it’s a sail boat, but some of the mothers have told me it reminds them of something else that we could talk about after everybody goes home and their husband and kid have gone to the movies or somewhere else. It is really hard saying “No.” But, I need to maintain my spotless reputation. Once, a mother followed me home. She walked in the door and dropped her raincoat on the floor. She was naked underneath. She came toward insisting that I bark with the German accent. I strained my vocal chords barking. It was scary, and that’s what makes my job hell.

Anyway, life is hard, but it beats the hell out of death, or a coma. What do you do in coma? You lay there surrounded by beeping hospital equipment and tubes in your arms monitoring your descent into death, or incremental return to being awake. I think it’s pretty bad to be in that situation, even if you come back to life. It is like trying to do your income taxes on April 14th with no computer, calculator, pencil, or forms, filing for an extension the next day, and buying a plane ticket to someplace you’ve never heard of, like Belarus.

Remember: life is hard, but it could be worse. No matter how hard it gets, just be glad you’re not dead yet.

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

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Antenantiosis

Posted on April 10, 2023 | Leave a comment

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

I don’t deserve you baby. You’ve been by my side though thick and thin, famine and feast, high and low, backward and forward, right and left, in and out, smooth and bumpy, rich and poor. Now, I have to add through marriage and divorce. It won’t be easy, but we’ve faced so many challenges together, and now, we can manage the Big D.

I know you didn’t see it coming. Stealth has been my catchword and the Sunset Motel has been my hideout. It has big-screen plasma TVs and room service: a hideout worthy of an adulterer with big ideas.

I’ve always had big ideas, but you never supported me—you scoffed. You drove me away. My portable potty would’ve made millions—an ice chest with a toilet seat. Or, what about the cat mop? A mop handle that you can affix to a cat and use to dust your tile and hardwood floors. You called it animal abuse and stupid. Or what about the floating baby carriage with a remote-controlled motor and steering mechanism. I managed to get a prototype built and our little Lucy had a real high seas adventure with the Coast Guard bringing her back to shore soaking wet, but unharmed! You hit me on the head repeatedly with a folding beach chair. You gave me a mild concussion and tried to convince me that I’m the biggest asshole in the universe. That hurt me more than the crack in my skull.

So, I’ve been seeing Janie the waitress from the Pancake House. We have been having lots of fun. Yesterday, we went for a sunset walk around the Best Buy parking lot. It is a huge parking lot, so we got some good exercise. Janie is so smart! She thinks my ideas are great and can’t wait to try my car registration window sticker scraper made from a cutlery-grade spatula with a razor sharp flipper. She’ll be the first to try it. We’re just waiting for her car’s registration to expire. We call it the “EZ-Scrape.”

Luckily, we sent Lucy to graduate school. Her doctoral dissertation, “Things Compared to Shit” won an award and she’s comfortably ensconced in a tenure track position at some Mid-Western University.

I’m going to burn the house down so you’ll be homeless after the divorce. I was thinking about right now. I’ve got a couple of cans of gasoline out in the car. I’m thinking of soaking all the furniture and throwing a stick match behind me as I go out the door and make my exit once and for all from your nanny negative nay-saying. I’ll pack my gym bag with some essentials. Then, I will fly like an eagle to the Pancake House.

POSTSCRIPT

He lit his house on fire and ran to the Pancake House to meet his true love Janie who he found in the back seat of a Cadillac, making in rock back and forth with a fat man with gray hair wearing a gold Rolex. He knew what he had to do. He pulled his “EZ-Scrape” prototype out of his gym bag, looked at his face in its mirror finish, opened the Cadillac’s back door and gave its razor-edge a test run that nobody in his small town would ever forget.

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

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Anthimeria

Posted on April 9, 2023 | Leave a comment

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

He was a real swinger. It was the 70s and that’s what everybody I knew wanted to be. A swinger. Which meant a cool, fun seeking, loose moraled fun seeker. It also meant they were open to a variety of sexual activities involving more than two people.

Eddie was an archetypal swinger. White disco suit with bell bottoms, swashbuckler shoes, big collared shirt unbuttoned halfway down, wide belt, and a pimp hat with a mirrored hat band and purple ostrich feather. Also, he wore three rings on each hand and a coke spoon hanging on a gold chain around his neck. Eddie made The Bee Gees look like 2-bit punks in comparison to him. He looked like he should’ve been the star of “Saturday Night Fever” instead of John Travolta.

While he could put on the clothes, and look the part, that’s as far as it went for Eddie. He couldn’t dance. He’d never snort coke. He couldn’t be cool. He was Halloweening. He was dressing up. It was all just a costume. He was off the rack. Then one night a real swinger invited Eddie to “do the dance” with him and his girlfriend. When the certified swinger said it, it was like it made Eddie’s purple plume stand up straight..

Eddie hiked his pants up and said “Ok man. Let’s make it happen, baby.” And off they went.

We had to bail Eddie out. He ended up “acting” in an adult film titled “Disco Swingers.” All the camera equipment was concealed behind the wall, shooting through a peephole. The police had somehow been tipped off and everybody was arrested. Eddie was completely freaked out. He dropped his swinger look and went back to jeans and a t-shirt. He was found not guilty due to being entrapped. After that, John Travolta got fat and the disco-swinger fad lost direction and died. Punk music emerged along with a certain FU sensibility. Johnny Rotten led the way and Eddie followed. He tore his blue-jean jacket, had a buzz cut on his head, wore safety pins in his newly pierced ears and motorcycle boots on his feet, had himself tattooed with the anarchy symbol, and frequently yelled “bollocks” at people for no reason. He sang the praises of “stickin’ it to the man.”

Now it’s the 21st century. Eddie claims he’s the oldest rapper on earth. He calls himself “Savage Tricky.” He does rap versions of doo-wop songs from the late 1950s to the early 1960s. “Blue Moon” is his signature song. He’s 72 years old and sits during his sets. He performs mainly at open mike clubs where “stinks” is the most frequently used adjective to describe his performances.

Don’t pity Eddie. He did this to himself.

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

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Anthypophora

Posted on April 8, 2023 | Leave a comment

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

That lady’s hat is huge, not to mention in poor taste. I know Easter’s around the corner, but an Easter basket hat is totally loony—no matter when it gets worn. Right now, it’s leaking jelly beans down the back of her neck and she’s oblivious. There goes a purple one and a pink one. The chocolate rabbit’s ear has a bite out of it.

What should I do? I’ll ask her to take it off when the movie starts. “Ma’m, can you please remove your hat before the movie starts?” Without turning, she shakes her head “No!” I ask again: “Please. I won’t be able see the movie.” It’s a big “No!” again. Should I report her to the manager?

The movie’s going to start in about 5 minutes. I run up the aisle to the manager’s office. He’s sitting inside at his desk. He’s wearing an Easter Basket hat! He told me the hats were an Easter weekend gimmick. He told me if I looked around the theatre I’d see 30 or 40 of them. I told him I only saw one, and it was blocking my view. Everybody else had removed theirs out of deference to the person behind them. He told me he’d give me a refund, or a ticket to another show. I told him there is no “other show.” It was my last chance to see a movie I had waited months to see. I was really mad! I was madder than hell!

The lights went down and I dashed back to my seat. The newsreel was starting. I asked the lady again to “Please” remove her hat. She vigorously shook her head “No” again. I was losing it. I considered strangling her—not good idea. I considered tearing off her hat and throwing it in the aisle—that was too easy. Then I remembered: my girlfriend had given me a Zippo lighter for my birthday. I pulled it out of my pocket and tried to light it so I could set the lady’s Easter hat ablaze. It wouldn’t light. I had forgotten to put fluid in it. Damn! I started kicking the seat from behind. The lady was rocking forward and backward. Finally, she turned and said, “Ok. You win. I will take it off, but my ears will get in your way. I hope you can live with that.”

It was the goddamn Easter Bunny sitting in front of me! To this day, I find it hard to believe it really happened. By the way, I got to see the movie and I enjoyed it. “Harvey” is about a wealthy drunk who starts having visions of a giant rabbit named Harvey.

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

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Antimetabole

Posted on April 7, 2023 | Leave a comment

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

I read the book and the book read me. This sounds pretty stupid, and maybe it is. The book has no consciousness, no agency, no nothing. It’s just a paper rectangle binding together other paper rectangles (called pages), covered with words constituting grammatically-coded sentences, paragraphs, and chapters.

Books are written to be read. That’s how they read you: with surprise and suspense and plots and all the other well-travelled literary forms that read you and seduce you—that capture and keep your interest. And, as they help the text “ring true” they have woven their way into the text’s fabric of plausibility—no matter where or when it unfurls: prose, poetry, fact, fiction, whatever.

So, you decide to read a treatise on symbolic logic. You don’t understand it. You don’t like it. You take it back to the bookstore for a refund. The bookstore doesn’t give refunds. You go ballistic and throw the book at the proprietor. It hits him in the head and knocks him unconscious. Somebody calls 911. The paramedics put the proprietor on a stretcher and carry him out of the bookstore shaking their heads. The police handcuff you. You are placed in a cell. You can’t be bailed out because of your violent demeanor. You are sharing the cell with a suspected serial killer. During the night he tries to pull out your intestines with his bare hands. The guard tells him to shut up and go back to bed. The next morning you are taken to the psychiatric hospital for evaluation. They determine you are suffering from PTSD from when you were a lifeguard in charge of the kiddie pool at a high-end country club in the Hamptons. You were prescribed medication that made you slur your words. You were released from jail. You sounded drunk. You lost your job. They didn’t even give you a breathalyzer test before they kicked you you the front door and threw the plant from your desk after you.. You stagger home and dig your grandfather’s shotgun out of the back of the front hall closet. You load it with .00 buckshot.

My God! What the hell happened?

You were not the intended reader—that’s what happened—the book hadn’t read you. It had read somebody else. Books should be required to provide a brief description of who is supposed to read them so this kind of literary tragedy can be avoided.

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

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Antimetathesis

Posted on April 6, 2023 | Leave a comment

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

Bad and good. Good and bad. What a waste of time making these determinations when the passage of time sheds new light and bad is made good and good is made bad. These reversals bear witness to the contingency of what matters—now it is good, then it is bad. Everything is subject to shifting sensibilities or the ongoing revelation of “truth” by the researches of science as it sweeps away folklore and banishes myth to life’s sidelines along with poetry and fiction. But people may freely believe what their communities, friends and families believe, even if it entails their rejection of life-saving medicines or procedures, resulting in death. We saw it over and over during the COVID epidemic and from time to time in communities that don’t permit blood transfusions or surgeries.

When we observe what we think is crazy, ignorant, destructive behavior we may call it tragic or stupid or evil. And we may condemn these people when their children die and we may just shake our heads when adults are put on respirators and die shortly thereafter. But where there is agency there is error, and error may go all the way around the circle of people constructing a community, and choosing, choosing, choosing. Right now there are former US military personnel filing lawsuits for cancer contracted from burn pits. Then there was Agent Orange . . .

Every choice we make is motivated by faith—there is no other way to obtain the fate that choosing projects—the future does not exist now: it exists in the throes of hope and fear and imagination—no matter how quickly we go from the present to the future: You put your key in your car’s ignition. You turn it. The car starts. Your faith is fulfilled. But, there’s always a chance it may not be—possibly in a deserted parking lot on a below-zero night.

When good and bad trade places we are reminded of their contingency: they are subject to change and can transform into each other. The clearest case I can think of right now is marijuana’s legalization. When I was in high school in the mid-sixties, a person I knew was sent to prison for a year for possession of one marijuana seed. Now, it is legal to buy it at a store in the mall. I guess it was always true that it was harmless, but that didn’t keep people from seeing it as harmful, and acting on that view. Anyway, most of the time when we act, we expect a given consequence to be brought into being by the action, but there is always a gap between what we do and what happens, however tiny. There also may be a constellation of conflicting assertions about our motivations for a given action: pulling the trigger on a handgun and killing somebody can result in the imputation of a variety of motives, from a tragic accident, to self-defense, to first degree murder. Depending on the circumstances, decisions are made about “what happened” in order to determine what to do next. All I know is we need to be aware of the contingency of deeply rooted cultural norms and their susceptibility to change or preservation. Permanence, without human assistance, is an illusion.

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

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

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Antiprosopopoeia

Posted on April 5, 2023 | Leave a comment

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

Me: Hey Rocky! Did you get your nickname from what your head is filled with? Rocks? Ha ha! I think a better nickname for you would be Itch. You spend half your time scratching and pulling on the crotch of your pants. It is one of the weirdest habits I’ve ever seen & I’ve seen a few. Like the guy who constantly combs d his pubes with a tiny nit rake. Or the guy who had to put whipped cream on his armpits before he could go to the movies. Or the woman who drank her coffee from an enema bulb. Finally, I knew a guy who always wore three pairs of underpants.

Every one of these behaviors is a habit, and as the cliche says, “Habits can be broken.” Think of your butt sniffing dog. You broke him of the habit by punching him in the nose whenever he tried a sniff.

Your habit can broken too.

You: Really? I’ve tried everything—wearing mittens, taping it up with duct tape, wearing a pre-formed plaster cast on my crotch. Nothing works. It is like my hands have a mind of their own—they’ve torn off the mittens, they tore off the duct tape, they pounded the plaster cast until it broke. Nothing works! I am doomed to be known as “Charlie Crotch Itch.”

Me: I can help you. There are two paths: 1. You can have your hands amputated, or, you can try some of my “Hands Off!” An organic chemical compound that dulls your desire to grab, pull, and scratch. It was developed by Vikings who had unusually sensitive skin. They needed to take it so they could successfully raid their neighbors. Without it, they would stand on the battlefield itching and scratching and get whacked to death by a walrus-tusk wielding enemy.

You: Wow that’s incredible. I’d like to try some “Hands Off!”

Me: Ok. I have a bottle right here for $200.00. I’ll take a check. Take 10 in the morning, every morning, and you’re all set. The bottle has 30 tablets, so I’ll set you up with automatic refill. Give me your credit card information so I can process your recurring order.

You: Ok. This is great.

Postscript

He took the pills that night, before bed—not in the morning as directed. His penis grew four feet and strangled him. It was the first recorded instance of Peniscide. The person selling the pills was arrested, but was released to work at a chemical warfare facility in Maryland for the US Army. It is rumored he is working on a gas-emitting “Borsht Bomb” that will be deployed in Ukrainian restaurants frequented by Russian soldiers in occupied areas.

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

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

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Antirrhesis

Posted on April 4, 2023 | Leave a comment

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

Me: “I gotta tell you, you’re off your nut.” I said “Eating a book will not make you smarter. It will make sick. This is the most asinine idea you ever came up with. Eating Plato’s Meno will not make you one bit wiser, even if you only eat a little bit— maybe a half-page per week. Read it, don’t eat it, for God’s sake!”

You: “Lookit asshole—you are the idiot here. Stop dictating my life’s course with your inflexible “down to earth” bullshit. You are, once again, rejecting something you could benefit from just because of your life in the Nerdy Sphere, where everything is careful-careful, tiptoeing around truth like it is a piece of dog crap on your carpet. Wake up num-nuts, smell the coffee and roses, and other things that are reminders of life’s joys. Instead, you’re going around like you’re sniffing wet dogs and cans of ‘4,000 Dead Fish Heads’ cat food.

I learned about book eating on the internet: ‘Swallow the Truth.’ There was a picture of the bearded Swami Litterati sitting in a red Cadillac convertible on a tropical beach. The website explained the benefits of ingesting books—how they would literally be digested by your body, and eventually your brain without having to put in the effort of reading. ‘Swallow the Truth’ has a cookbook for sale for $15.00. I purchased one. It shows how you can include book pages in a variety of dishes—making them really easy to swallow. My favorite is ‘Paperback Pizza.’

I have been eating Plato’s dialogues for the past year and I’m almost done. I’m still waiting for the ‘message’ to come through, but I have learned something very deep: Having faith in something that has no discernible affect on your life, is the faithfullest faith you could ever have, and if faith is all you need, nothing else matters—just faith with no return—with a foundation in futility. So, as I eat the dialogues to no effect, there is a lesson: futility is the pinnacle of human experience. Living life with no expectations of a return for your efforts will set you free. So, now I’m going to eat a page out of Plato’s Gorgias. I’ve moistened it and sprinkled it with powdered sugar to improve its taste. Here goes!”

Me: To impress me, he wadded up the page and stuffed it in his mouth and tried to swallow it whole without chewing. He started choking. I gave him the Heimlich Maneuver. I tugged and lifted and hugged and hugged. He was going limp and turning colors. I reached in his mouth to fish out the paper wad and he bit me. The ambulance arrived. The EMT guy had a thing like a drain snake with tweezers on the end. She shoved it down my friend’s throat, twisted it, and pulled out the paper wad. He took a big breath. My friend was going to live!

I went to see him at the hospital and he blamed me for what had happened. I told him to go fu*k himself and left, slowly wadding up a quarter-page of Heidegger’s Being and Time. I was sorely tempted to pop it into my mouth. But instead, I threw it on the floor and crushed it with my boot.

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

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Antisagoge

Posted on April 3, 2023 | Leave a comment

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

Ok, it’s true, the swimming pool has turned into swamp. But more importantly, it has become a local attraction since my friend Dr. Preedle accidentally discovered a heretofore undiscovered organism chuffing around the deep end. Once people found out about it, they came flocking around to see the amazing Preedle-Paddle-Rectus. The fence around the pool is working to stem the flow of curiosity seekers. Since started charging admission, we’ve made $500! The hats, key chains, t-shirts, and travel mugs are doing well too. We’ve named the organism “Bloppy” after his gooey exterior. We don’t have to feed him or do anything except make sure the pool is full of algae-laden dirty water. Bloppy has beautiful blue “eyes” (we’re not sure they are actually eyes—Dr. Preedle was working on this). Whenever people look into Bloppy’s eyes their bodies slump a little and they seem to find peace. I have experienced it a couple of times and I never felt better in my life. This is another selling point—we call it “Slimelightenment.” Bloppy seemed to enjoy making people whole. And he could smile, with his human-like lips.

He was as big as a watermelon. He was transparent—you could see his internal organs. He didn’t seem to have a heart, and that did not bother us because he was alive. As far as the other organs went, we were clueless. He had what looked like tentacles on his rear that propelled him around the pool very fast when he moved them. Also, almost miraculously, he would swim to me when I called—he had learned his name.

Then one morning I went outside to say hello to Bloppy. Dr. Preedle’s white lab coat was floating in the pool. I looked all for him—the University, the “Mean Beans” coffee shop, and few other places he frequented. I went back home and sat down by the pool, making sure the “Closed” signs were up. Bloppy came swimming over and I looked in his eyes. My anguish over Dr. Preedle melted away. All of a sudden Dr. Preedle’s hand emerged from below the water. Bloppy squeaked. “Uh-oh” I thought.

I was making so much money, I could not risk losing Bloppy and closing everything down. I pulled what was left of Dr. Preedle out of the pool, dragged his remains to the garden, and buried him. What was I going to do? I started bringing homeless people home under the pretext of a good meal and a swim in my pool. I would push them in the pool and Blobby would feed on them. There were always leftovers I had to dispose of. I had filled my garden with bodies, so I started driving them around in my car, and shoving them out in mall, school, and church parking lots.

I became the most notorious serial killer ever, even though nobody knew it was me. “I” was known as the “Parking Lot Killer.” I knew they would catch me eventually. All the parking lots were under observation, and some smart detective would eventually make the connection between the fact that all of the bodies were wet, and my famous swimming pool Bloppy concession. But I was stuck and nobody put two and two together yet, and I vowed to stay in business until they do. Besides, the homeless population is going down. Most people think that’s a good thing and so does Bloppy, who has put on weight and looks really healthy.

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

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Antistasis

Posted on April 2, 2023 | Leave a comment

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

I thought I had cracked the woodchuck code by shifting to another animal with “wood” in its name. I new I would be beaten down by the woodchuck aficionados, and probably banned for life from “World Punsters” who want to preserve ancient puns and sayings like jam—like a jam on the road to change. What they get is progress toward no progress. When I unveiled my new “wood” question, woven into a pun at the annual meeting in Amsterdam, the audience threw mayonnaise covered french fries, and whole conical paper containers, at me like they had planned it ahead of my scheduled presentation. Soaked in mayonnaise, and accompanied by loud boos, I lifted my bullhorn and read: “How much wood could a Woodpecker peck, when a woodpecker pecks wood.” A wooden shoe went flying past my head. The delegation from Italy threw a headless woodpecker onto the stage. The Japanese delegation threw exploding origami woodpeckers. The Americans threw Woodpecker puppets with nails driven into their heads. There were hundreds of countries represented, but suffice it to say, there was hostility beaming from every corner. I was terrified. Then, somebody in a giant woodpecker suit came bursting through the entrance pushing a shopping cart.

“Get out of the way scum!” the giant woodpecker yelled, scaring the cowardly audience. It made it to the stage and told me to get into the shopping cart. People yelled obscenities as as we pushed our way to the exit. We ran to the University of Amsterdam where I had lectured 10 year before. The woodpecker took off its head. It was the girl who had called me a fascist for wearing a black shirt with my suit when I had lectured there. She had aged, but she was just as cute now as she was then. I was covered in mayonnaise, or I would’ve given her a big hug. As a joke, she started licking the mayonnaise off my face. We were both laughing, and things got serious. So serious, in fact, that I have made Amsterdam my home. I have continued my literary endeavors, and Sanna (the woodpecker) supports me. Currently, I’ve started revising aphorisms to align them more accurately with life’s 21st century vagaries. I’m working on “When the going gets tough, the tough get going.” My latest revision is “When the going gets tough, get going out of there.” I am making my revised sayings into wall hangings painted onto small pizza pans. I think they have great potential for the kind of moral realignment that world desperately needs.

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

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Antithesis

Posted on March 31, 2023 | Leave a comment

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

There are a lot of different ideas that people have about everything—maybe more than similar ideas. The opposites of life are always inhabited by peoples’ points of view, no matter how much they may lie to “preserve the peace.” Peace vs. war. You would think, if they weren’t threatened, that war would be the last thing anybody wants. Aside from self-defense, one would think peace is the highest goal imaginable in geopolitics, but again, unless a nation-state is the victim of aggression.

Last night, I was watching Stinger missile strikes leveled against a Russian artillery battery located in Ukraine. The onslaught was merciless, destroying the battery, tanks, helicopters, and killing Russian soldiers fleeing the attack on foot. The “footage” could be fake, and it probably was—a good piece of anime—very realistic. If fake, it is representative of a desire. After all, the Russians invaded a sovereign nation—a democracy with no interest in war. Why shouldn’t we want to see the Russians defeated, blown to hell and sent home in meat wagons?

Thanatos and Eros are in constant conflict. Thanatos always wins in the end. We are conscious of our mortality very rarely—maybe if we’re sick or badly injured. But every day that we’re living, we’re dying. It is just a matter of time. We do what we can to forestall it. There are myriad cons purporting to enable us to prolong our lives. We may be obsessed by “secrets”of longevity—like water from holy springs or “special blends” of whatever.

My secret is to sit on my couch with my cat looking out the window for at least 2 hours per day. (sometimes longer, but never shorter—the cat sleeps through it all). Every day, I try to find something that’s changed outside, and then, put it on the Thanatos/Eros scale. I am looking forward to spring when there’s a whole lot of Eros going on. I live under a flyway that Canada Geese use. Last night the first flock of spring flow over, honking noisily. It sounded like they were saying “life, life, life” as they flew over my garage. What else could they be saying? “Honk?” Maybe. But they’re on their way to build nests, mate with their life partners, lay eggs, raise goslings, and fly South in the Fall.

So anyway, I head into the kitchen to take my supplements, drink two glasses of maple water, and have my pickled beet sandwich for lunch. After lunch, I’ll head out to the garage and smoke five or six cigarettes to balance things out.

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

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Antitheton

Posted on March 30, 2023 | Leave a comment

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

I didn’t know where I was going until I met you Eddy. Now I know I’m going to hell. I was good. You were bad. Now, we’re both bad. I feel like a duck out of water. A bird without wings. A dump truck that can’t dump. I don’t know if I can go back to being “Big Nice John”—what my friends used to call me. Now they call me “Big Rotten John” and look the other way when they see me on the street. The “rotten” will never go away, the “nice” will never return. But maybe if I can think of a way to redeem myself, I can push “rotten” away and pull back “nice” across my soul like a blanket of goodness, giving me peace. If only I hadn’t forgotten to feed my little brother’s fish for two weeks when he went to camp. Everybody thinks I did it on purpose, Eddy, because you told me to and I did your bidding like some kind of wind-up robot. You know I didn’t and you won’t say so because you want to look like you’re in control of me. For the 5-millionth time, I forgot to Fred them, and you know it!

Now, I am buying new fish to replace the dead ones. Swimming around in the aquarium they will erase my brother’s traumatic memory of seeing his starved fish floating belly up. The smell was surely memorable too. I cleaned the aquarium and filled it with clean tap water and dumped in the fish. The Blennies were ugly. The Clownfish were striking. The Pipefish were crazy. It was a pretty good collection of fish. I went to my room to wait for my brother to come home.

When he got home he went into his room. I expected a big “wow!” Instead, he screamed “You rotten bastard! You are so cruel. You should be shot!” He ran down stairs. I went into his room and all the fish were dead. I picked the pamphlet up off the floor “Caring for Your Salt Water Fish.” I hadn’t read it. It looked like I had struck another death blow when I filled the aquarium with tap water. I went downstairs to beg my brother’s forgiveness. “Hands up!” he yelled. Somehow he had found Dad’s .45 and was aiming it at me. “It was an accident! Please believe me. I would never murder your fish on purpose. I bought those fish for you. I didn’t read the instructions for setting up the tank. That was stupid. I am stupid. Please forgive me.” My brother believed I had set him up with the dead fish, like the horse’s head in the bed in Godfather. When I heard that, I got on my knees and begged him not to kill me. At that moment, Mom came home from the grocery store. She yelled at my brother: “Drop the gun you idiot!” My brother immediately dropped the gun. My mother picked it up off the floor and aimed it at my brother and yelled: “Go to your room, or I’ll shoot!” Mt brother ran up the stairs. I told my mother what had happened and she told me she was surprised I wasn’t dead on the floor when she got home. She told me I had to do my brother’s laundry and clean his room once a week for 2 months. I started to complain and she aimed the gun at me and told me to shut up. She told me to invite Eddy over for a good old pistol whipping—to jog his memory about my first fish kill. Mom’s maiden name was Gambino. She knew how to handle bullshit.

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

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

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Apagoresis

Posted on March 29, 2023 | Leave a comment

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

“If you keep doing that, the palm of your hand will grow hair,” my father told me. I asked him what he was talking about and he said, “Come on, don’t screw around with me. Your hand is not for that.” I was still puzzled. I used my hand for a lot of things and I had no idea which of them would cause hair to grow on my palm. I decided to ask my mom. She was usually more straightforward than Dad was. I asked, “Mom, what would cause hair to grow on the palm of my hand?” She looked really alarmed. “Do you have it? Are you growing hair there? Oh God, I knew this would happen at some point as you got older.” She pulled her apron over her her head and shook her head while she said “No, no no.” I told her I had no palm-hair and she was relieved. I decided to leave her alone. Poor Mom.

I went to see the school nurse. If anybody could help, she could. She told me not to worry about it—it was a myth and I could do it all I wanted to do it and no hair would grow on my palm. However, there could be other consequences from the repetition. I was relieved, but I still didn’t know what “it” is. So, I asked the nurse. She said, “Here, look in my medical dictionary. You’ll learn a lot and eventually you’ll find the answer. It was daunting. There are tons of medical words in the medical dictionary. After two days of looking, the only thing I could find that seemed relevant was “carpel-tunnel syndrome.” Now I understood! I was an obsessive video game player, and that could cause carpel-tunnel syndrome affecting my wrist and hand. The “hair on the palm of the hand” thing was Dad’s way of getting me to back off on the video games. I was so relieved. I went upstairs and booted up “Naughty Nurses” on my computer, drifting into my daily revery about the school nurse. At that moment I realized what Dad was talking about! I looked at the palm of my hand, turned off the computer, and started sorting through my baseball card collection.

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

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Aphaeresis

Posted on March 28, 2023 | Leave a comment

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

‘Oly moly! That’s a Gray Wrinkle Beak! It is so rare that nobody has ever seen one—except for me. I’m taking pictures with my I-Phone. I will be on the news! Every birdwatcher in the world will envy me. I will be the talk of the town and A-Number One. I want to get a picture of the Wrinkle Beak in flight. I walk toward it. It does not move. I get closer and closer and see why it does not move. It is a meticulously crafted fake. Even up close, it looks real. This has to be the work Captain Tweet, rare bird maker.

He thinks he’s funny. He has been on television a number of times, and explains how his work induces the thrill of discovery’s priceless feeling that, for a short time, puts you in the center of your world, alone with the consequences. Most people opt to take pictures and think about all the money they’ll make selling them, and the TV appearances too, not to mention a few pages in Audubon Magazine. And then, almost as quickly as they come, they are shattered by the ersatz bird revelation.

That’s how I felt: shattered. I have been an avid bird watcher all my life—ever since my parents gave me a cheap pair of plastic binoculars on my 9th birthday. They’re a little nicked up now, but they still work. Captain Tweet had pretty much ruined my life-long hobby. I would show him.

I bought a drone. I disguised as best as I could as a Pterosaur—a prehistoric flying reptile with a 35-wingspan. I put my creation on the roof on my car and headed for Tweet’s. He lived about 400 miles away. I would be there by sunset. I had a sort of hazy plan—I would circle my Pterosaur over his house. I copied my Pterosaur from a dinosaur book that I’d had since I was a kid. I was riding along listening to “Talking Heads” when suddenly my car left the ground! I looked out the driver’s side window and could see flapping wings. I looked down and we were about 50 feet off the ground and following the highway. I was totally flipped out. As we neared Captain Tweet’s residence (shaped like a birdcage), I saw State Troopers surrounding it, with assault weapons aimed at us. One of them had a bullhorn. He said: “Attention, you are harboring a dangerous prehistoric bird. Land without further ado or we will be forced to shoot you down.” At that, we went into a nosedive, straight for Captain Tweet’s house, Tweet came running out of his house shaking his fist. We clipped him and crashed into his house. It started burning and I got out of my car and ran to the curb. As I ran past Captain Tweet, I noticed his head was gone. It must’ve happened when we clipped him. Luckily, I wasn’t driving, so I wasn’t charged with anything.

I will never know how my fake Pterosaur did what it did. But now, birdwatchers are safe from Captain Tweet’s debilitating antics. To be sure, he was an artist, but he used his art for evil ends. May he rot in hell, and be pecked all over his body by an Ivory Bill Woodpecker for all eternity.

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

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Aphorismus

Posted on March 27, 2023 | Leave a comment

Aphorismus ( a-phor-is’-mus): Calling into question the proper use of a word.

Me: You keep calling me “hun.” I haven’t said anything up to now because I don’t want to ire you or otherwise make you floss and fume. I am not a hun. I am from New Jersey and was raised Catholic. There was a gang called “The Huns,” but I couldn’t join because I had a red motor scooter and the gang rode big noisy motorcycles. So, please stop calling me “hun.”

You: God, where do I begin? I understand most of what you say, but as usual, your gibberish index is high. First, when I call you “hon” it’s short for honey—H-O-N. It has nothing to do with Huns—H-U-N-S. Huns were crazy people who swept into Europe from South Asia in the 4th and 5th centuries and nearly wiped it out. Some people say they were after the closely guarded secret recipe for cannolis when they sacked Rome. They failed, and cannolis remained a regional dish with their recipe held by a handful of Romans who disguised it with mozzarella cheese and hid it under straw in Buffalo corals when the Huns invaded.

So, again, “hon” is short for “honey,” the sweet sticky liquid that bees produce. When I call you “hon” I’m calling you sweet—a term of endearment, because I love sweet things, and people like you who’re sweet. In that vein, I could call you sugar too, Hon. Now, let’s look at me “flossing and fuming.” We’ll let fuming go, but “flossing” is totally off the mark. Flossing is what you do with a piece string after you brush your teeth. I think you’re actually going for “fussing,” which is usually used along with fuming to denote a quality of anger and deep consternation. “Flossing and fuming,” on the other hand would refer to an oral hygiene regime undertaken in anger. I can imagine it’s possibility, but clearly it’s not what you intended. You misused the word.

Me: Ok ok Ms. Language Police. You understood me, that’s what matters. I guess my problem was that I misunderstood you when you called me “Hon.” Hun and hon sound the same. My mistake could be expected. But I guess calling me Hun should’ve rung a bell, but I sort of thought you were calling me bad ass, which is a compliment where I come from. I could see myself in a black leather jacket, jeans and boots, and couple of tattoos, instead of this stupid blue blazer and gray pants and a striped tie and wingtips I have to wear to work as towel boy in the hotel restroom. My boss is a bully. I would commit pesticide if I wasn’t afraid of what would happen to me in prison. I’d tear the hand drier out of the wall and beat him over the head with it.

You: Oh, you’re such a wild man. I understand what you’re trying to say, Hun. You’d like to ambush the patrician in the bath! I understand you and that’s good enough for me.

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

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Apocarteresis

Posted on March 26, 2023 | Leave a comment

Apocarteresis (a-po-car-ter’-e-sis): Casting of all hope away from one thing and placing it on another source altogether.

I couldn’t stand it any more. The more I invested myself in it, the worse it got. I wanted one thing, and one thing only: somebody to love and be loved by.

I met Felicia at the local bar. She was half drunk, sipping what looked like a whiskey sour. Well, actually, she was slurping it. Three guys were hovering around her like some kind of predatory flies. They kept asking her “Now?” like they were waiting for something. She left and the three guys left one by one at 5-minute intervals and didn’t come back. Eventually, she came back looking a little worse for wear. I asked her what she was doing out there. She said, “Looking at the stars.” I thought that was pretty cool. We talked about a lot of things until the bar closed. I got the feeling that a romance had budded. I asked her to come home with me and spend the night.

We had a wild time, most of it in bed. I felt like I was with a naughty angel—everything was good and bad at the same time. She was gone when I got up, but she had made coffee—so strong when I drank it, it felt like my ears were flapping. I went back to the bar that night to find her. She wasn’t there, but one of the guys from last night was. He asked me: “Did you nail Felicia? She’s always ready for fun.” My heart sunk. I had thought she might’ve been the one, not a time share condo. The guy asked me: “Have you been checked?” “Checked for what?” I asked. He grabbed his crotch and quietly said: “Clap.” Now, I wanted to cry. I had heard rumors about clap, and how it could kill you if it went untreated, and along way to death, every time you peed it was like a bonfire in your urinary tract.

I went to the doctor. I was examined. I was prescribed pills to take three times a day for two weeks. At that moment, I decided I did not want to have sex with potential disease spreaders any more. Condoms we’re out of the question for me: I couldn’t wear a balloon on my hooter, no matter what. So, I bought an inflatable sex doll. I named her Roxanne, bought her the optional blonde wig and a foot pump to bring her to life. I started pumping. Her legs rolled out and plumped up, then her shapely torso, and finally her head. I lit some candles, put on Barry White and took off me clothes. Roxanne blew out when I got on top of her. A whoosh of perfumed air came out of a leak in her head as she deflated with a squeaky-farty sound, and her optional wig fell off. I was mad and deeply disappointed. I decided celibacy was the only way out for me.

I joined the “Brothers of the Flaccid Way.” We are a group of men devoted to achieving impotency through reading Lao Tzu and eating salad. Each day, we watch an adult movie to gauge our progress. It is ok if your desire remains, as long as you can’t do anything about it. Judging by the grunting and how the monks’ robes bounce up and down during the daily movie, “Brothers of the Flaccid Way” is failing in its mission. Maybe the monks need to eat more salad. I became flaccid two years ago, achieving the status of “Limp Pilgrim.” Lately, I’ve been thinking about leaving the Brothers and overcoming my “condom phobia” at a camp in the Catskills called “Coksock Mountain.” It offers a series of “on & off” condom exercises that are fun and easy, poetry writing workshops about personal struggles with venereal diseases, and condom-mandatory orgies with local women.

I decided to give “Coksock Mountain” a try. I got off the bus and registered. After two weeks of “on&off” and poetry writing, I qualified for my first orgy. I grabbed a fist full of condoms and headed out. I could hear Barry White’s “It’s Ecstasy When You Lay Down With Me” drifting through the warm night air. It reminded me of Roxanne.

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

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Apocope

Posted on March 25, 2023 | Leave a comment

Apocope (a-pok’-o-pe): Omitting a letter or syllable at the end of a word. A kind of metaplasm.

It was 1969 and I was goin’ to the go-go. I was drivin’ all the way to New York City from Beetroot, Iowa. I could’ve gone surfin’ USA, but I didn’t know how swim, and surfing required a degree of athleticism which I was lacking. I failed gym class in my senior year of high school because I couldn’t climb a rope hanging from the ceiling. I lost my grip, fell to the hardwood floor and broke my wrist in three places. My gym teacher was suspended for a month because he hadn’t put a mat under the rope.

While we were waiting for the ambulance, he stood there and blew his gym teacher whistle at me. I think he would have rather kicked me, or dragged me to the edge of the gym floor and left me there so he could continue the rope-climbing tests, or maybe go outside for a couple a’ smokes, until things calmed down and the ambulance left. His motto was “Do as I say, not as I do.” He was a hypocrite, but there was something about the motto that was redeeming. However, it also had a scary dimension. Once, he said to me “Burn in Hell you little bastard” I had popped out and we lost an important intramural baseball game. I didn’t know how to burn in hell, so I asked him. He told me to just keep doin’ what I was doin’ and I’d get there soon enough. It was the best talk we ever had.

I exited the Holland tunnel and headed uptown to the go-go. I parked in a garage that cost $200.00 for four hours. I got out of my car. New York smelled dirty and I had a 10-block walk to th’ go-go. When I got there, I looked through the window and saw some pretty girls go-going in cages above the dance floor. I paid the $100.00 cover charge and went inside. It smelled like beer, whiskey, and sweat. I was visibly excited. A cute girl was looking at me and nodding her head to the music.

“The Peppermint Twist” started playing and I asked her if she wanted to dance. She said, “Sure baby, but I’ll need a Singapore Sling first.” I got one for her and she sat down, hardly sipping it at all. “Peppermint Twist” was coming to an end, so I ran out on the dance floor to do some solo twistin’, like cool guys do. But, somebody had spilled a drink on the floor. I slipped and crash-landed. I had just gotten a pair of Beatle Boots, wore them to the go-go, and little did I know, they had slippery soles. My Nehru jacket was destroyed and the chain on my PEACE medallion broke. But the worst thing that happened was I broke my wrist again, and was waiting for the ambulance. But maybe even worse: when I fell, the girl I was supposed to be dancing with, ran over to me, pulled my wallet out of my back pocket a took off out the door, leaving me with nothing—no cash, no I.D., no credit card, no cat picture. Nothing.

Now, I was walking the streets of NYC after being rejected by The Salvation Army and several other shelters for appearing to be “solvent.” I had a dirty styrofoam cup and was trying to raise enough money to bail out my car. Then one day, I ran into the girl who had stolen my wallet. She told me how bad she felt, reached into her purse and, pulled out my wallet. I was saved! until I looked inside my wallet. It was empty. She had spent my cash and maxed out my credit card. She invited me to stay with her until I got back on my feet. That was four years ago. I do the cooking, keep the place clean, and take care of our baby. She works at the go-go. For now, this is a happy ending.

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

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Apodixis

Posted on March 24, 2023 | Leave a comment

Apodixis (a-po-dix’-is): Proving a statement by referring to common knowledge or general experience.

Pine trees are made out of pine. That’s why they are named PINE trees. If I said I am a pine tree that would not be accurate. I am made out of flesh and blood, not pine. I am called a “human,” but not “a flesh and blood.” Technically, I am meat. When I went to a bar, I would say “I’m going to the meat market.” Girls are meat. I wanted to pick one out, get her drunk, and take her home. I liked them lean, but late on a Friday night we’ll-marbled or hefty were fine. We all know, you can’t always get what you want, but sometimes you can get what you need. Nine times out of ten I hit the right spot around midnight, and you know, a lot of liquor goes a long way. You might ask “A long way where?” Down Bracken Street, right on Grove and left on Briarcliffe. That’s where! My place. Worked every time. Well, almost every time.

Two years ago, I brought a corpulent lady home with me. Given her BMI she was still half-sober at midnight. I thought maybe that would make things more fun. I told her to sit on the couch, and that I had to get ready in the kitchen. “The kitchen?” She asked. I said “You’ll see.” I was in the kitchen for about five minutes and she asked “What’s that smell?” “Wait!” I said. I came out of the kitchen with a big red bowl full of popcorn and a dvd of “Love Story” from the 60s. I love the way the girlfriend dies at the end of the movie. Every girl I ever brought home loved it, and being drunk helped them get in touch with their emotions and stay awake for the whole movie. But not this girl!

She pushed me down on the couch and started kissing me. Her tongue was as big as a popsicle. I was shocked, but I didn’t say “No.” She buried me with her body. I could hardly breathe. After it was over, she demanded I call her a cab and pay for it too. I did. I was afraid. She ordered me to give her my cellphone number so we could stay in touch. I thought about getting a new SIM card. The next day she texted me. She invited herself over on Friday and sent me a nude picture with a Parakeet perched on her finger. I thought about calling the police, but what would I say? There was nothing remotely criminal yet—harassment wouldn’t work because I couldn’t say “No.” I had always been passive. Being that way never got me in trouble. And as crazy as it seems, I was ready for another round of floppy flesh.

To make a long story short, we got married. On Fridays, we reenact the popcorn episode. It never gets old. Things you love never lose their luster. Our relationship is bright and shiny.

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

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

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Apophasis

Posted on March 23, 2023 | Leave a comment

Apophasis (a-pof’-a-sis): The rejection of several reasons why a thing should or should not be done and affirming a single one, considered most valid.

Life is made of decisions. Some more complicated than others. Some more urgent then others. Some escape consciousness altogether, like walking—a series of small steps that take you somewhere—you may call it a habit because you don’t “feel it,” you just go. Maybe we could say that a habit is a foregone decision, but I’m not sure I know what I’m talking about. I guess a traditional decision happens when something needs to change—it may involve the reconsideration of your habitual way, or dealing with something that pops up in your life, has a degree of urgency, can’t be ignored, is absent a clear-cut plan for its resolution, and appears to be amenable to choice—that you can and should do something about it. The challenge is manifest in pros and cons, and their relative weight in the particular case of judgment which is about coming to a decision founded on pros and cons, which include, in addition to empirically verifiable facts, feelings and emotions pertinent to the judgment: you may decide to drink a glass of milk because it is good for you. You may decide not to drink a glass of milk because you don’t like how it tastes. There’s more to it than this, but it’s good enough for me, or I’m pretty sure it’s good enough for me as I change the kind of underpants I wear.

I have been wearing tighty whities since the beginning of time. I have never used the pee pee fly. It is completely useless. Why is it there? As I’ve gotten older, my tighty whities have started to pinch my crotch and make it itch. The only way I can relieve the itch with my pants on is to pull down on my pants crotch and squirm around. Very embarassing.

So I checked out boxers. They have a nice accessible pee pee slit. Highly functional. And if you want, you can pull them down from the top. They are made from light weight cotton, silk, or super light synthetics, not dish towel weight material like the tighty whities. Given their light weight, you can pack more underpants when you travel—a real plus. They aren’t as absorbent as tighty whities, which may cause problems when you have an extra drop of pee pee that does not make it to the urinal and shows up on the front of your pants as a little wet circle.

The other alternative is to go commando. You will save the cost of underpants entirely, have less laundry, and feel tougher as a man—ancient warriors wore no underpants. However, the embarrassing pee pee spot is still a possibility, unless you wear blue jeans all the time. The heavyweight denim will absorb your little boo boos every time.

I am not going to lay out the pros and cone of each kind of underpants (or none). I think it should be clear. Oh, by the way, I considered the jock strap, but that’s so “out there” it didn’t warrant consideration.

I’m going to go commando. I wear blue jeans all the time. I will be burning my tighty whities this afternoon.

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

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Apoplanesis

Posted on March 22, 2023 | Leave a comment

Apoplanesis (a-po-plan’-e-sis): Promising to address the issue but effectively dodging it through a digression.

Reporter: Why were you arrested.?

Vice Principal: In a minute, please.

I’m always happy to greet and talk to the press. News reporting is a bulwark of our democracy. When I was a reporter for my high school newspaper, I exposed the principal for selling parking permits to faculty when they were supposed to be free. I’m surprised nobody turned him in before me. He supposedly had a zero tolerance policy on squealing. Squealers where threatened to be assigned to pick up cigarette butts “on school property,” a task that was so onerous that nobody said a word. Even more powerful as a disincentive were the photoshopped pictures he had of faculty engaging in “activities” with students. I guess faculty were complicit in something approximating the pictures, or they would not have acceded to the principal’s threats. After he was busted, the principal was put on “butt duty” and demoted to classroom aide and mandated to take 100 hours of honesty training workshops. In one of their exercises, a valuable item is left on the floor. The facilitator leaves the room and the trainees discuss the pros and cons of stealing it—in this case a Rolex watch belonging to the facilitator. When the facilitator came back, the watch was gone and nobody could remember what happened.

Ten minutes before the end of the training session, the principal, sobbing in tears, pulled the watch out of his pocket and said “I am so ashamed.” The facilitator called for a group hug. The principal was nearly smothered and was taken for observation to the hospital where it was discovered he had a cracked rib. After his training was completed he was reassigned as a school crossing guard, where the children swear he frequently holds his stop sign upside down, drinks out of a paper bag, and smells funny. He also makes them race each other across the street in front of cars while he stands on the curb cheering and fanning himself with his stop sign. If this is true, the principal will be sent to rehab, and all will be well. After rehab, the principal, due to “extensive hands-on experience,” will be made Superintendent of Schools for his district. In a way, I think I helped him get where he is today—if I hadn’t blown the whistle, he’d still be a mediocre administrator selling parking permits. Clearly, the system works. The sensitive, humane management of employee criminality and dereliction yield positive results, among which are employee retention, and the avoidance of law suits.

Reporter: Ok. Cut the crap. We’ve heard the old “dodgeroo” before. Now that we know about the principal and all the rest of your evasive BS, tell us why you were arrested!

Vice Principal: I have been granted bail, as you know. Bail is an admirable aspect of our legal system. If you have money or a trusty bail bondsman, and you’re not a flight risk, you can get out of jail pending your trial. I would never fly anywhere anyway, or even take a train or a bus. I’m a solid risk. You can trust that!

Well, I’ve got to go serve lunch at the nursing home, and then go to church for evening mass. We’ll take this up again at a later date.

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

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

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Aporia

Posted on March 21, 2023 | Leave a comment

Aporia (a-po’-ri-a): 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 [=diaporesis].

Time was running out. It was almost my birthday and I couldn’t face it it. I was old: I was getting deaf, my legs were wobbly, I had developed a double-vision malady and could no longer drive. I got up a half-dozen times at night to pee, my teeth were coming lose, I was chronically constipated. An MRI had shown white spots on my brain. My right pinky was frozen in a 90 degree angle to the palm of my hand. I wear a brace on my hand to retrain my pinkie to go flat. Probably, if I thought about it a little longer, a few more signs of age-related body-rot would come mind.

I said to myself “Billy, you’re only 62. You ought to be able to overcome all this crap and feel young again. Chin up. Damn, that was stupid, my wattle buried my chin 5 years ago. Hmmm. Do some research. You’ll find something. I felt a little like Humpty Dumpty trying to put myself back together again.”

I went where everybody goes when there’s an urgency in their lives: Google. I made a boilerplate search document listing my malady’s and asking for cures. I sent it off to Google. I got one of those blue responses asking “Do you mean you are dying and want to be cremated?” I tried again with less detail. I spent all day going through the responses. As you can imagine, a good number of them were bizarre. I think the weirdest was the recommendation that for a week to stick a lit Christmas tree light in my butt every-other day, leaving it in for six hours each time. When I read that, I didn’t know whether to laugh or cry. One recommendation was to “scoop out” one of my eyes, precluding being cross-eyed. That one almost made me turn off the computer. But I didn’t.

What came up next was a site selling supplements. My daughter takes supplements and they don’t seem to hurt her, except for the barely visible mustache that looks like a shadow on her upper lip. So, I ordered a bottle of “Youngy” ground “Gods Nuts” for $200.00. They came in the mail the next day. They smelled a little funky. I took the recommended dose of 12. Nothing happened right away. Eventually they kicked in and ALL of my malady’s evaporated! I went wild celebrating non-stop for two days. I woke up on my birthday ready to rip. About halfway through singing “Happy Birthday” to me, I started feeling funny. My stomach was bulging out. I went to the bathroom and was shocked to see my penis was gone, replaced by a vagina. I was going to have a baby! It all moved so fast! My pregnancy lasted a week. I have a beautiful little girl who looks like my late mother, and my penis returned!

Now I am a very young looking celebrity. I was on FOX News the other night. Tucker Carlson interviewed me and said he had already given birth to 3 babies, but he has to keep them out of sight. What a liar! I’ve Googled “Youngy” and “Gods Nuts” hundreds of times and they’ve completely disappeared from the internet. My daughter Athena has grown four feet in two months and has started to speak. She talks in a monotone like one of those outer space creatures in a 50s sci-fi movie. But, who cares? We love each other and are living a good life together.

POSTSCRIPT

After writing what’s above, Billy was found dead, run over in his own driveway. Athena was suspected of his murder. She stole his car and was reported by some drug-soaked hippy losers to have boarded a flying saucer along with Jimi Hendrix, Kieth Moon, and Janis Joplin. According to the hippies, the flying saucer “like shot off into the sky like a big flat jet, man.” The hippies said she was 8-feet tall and was wearing a t-shirt that said “Gods Nuts.” The police ignored the hippies’ “insane ranting” and the case was listed as unsolved, and remains so today.

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

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

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Aposiopesis

Posted on March 20, 2023 | Leave a comment

Aposiopesis (a-pos-i-o-pee’-sis): Breaking off suddenly in the middle of speaking, usually to portray being overcome with emotion.

It was the most beau beau . . . Damn. I’m sorry. My feelings took over there for a couple of seconds. I’ll give it another try. It was the most beautiful Ba . . . Oh wait. I’m stuck again. This is really hard to do. Maybe if I start at the beginning. As you all know, I’m a native New Yorker. I walk New York. I “talk” New York. My ancestors were Dutch. They went crazy when the Brits took over, doing everything they could to erase the Dutch cultural influences. But all that’s behind me. I am a New Yorker through and through.

I work on Wall Street for an international accounting firm, Arthur J. Jinglebooks. Jinglebooks has been around since the beginning of time. If you’ve travelled extensively, you’ve seen their offices all over the world, and would recognize their logo—a book with a bell clapper hanging out of the bottom.

The current CEO had decided that the firm needed to expand further in the US. So, I was being sent to Jackson, Mississippi to open a new branch. Growing up in New York, I was taught that Mississippi was like the dark side of the moon—loaded with bigots and other not too smart people who all wore overhauls, drove pickup trucks, chewed tobacco, were “too close” to their relatives, and could barely read.

Here I am. The archetypal New Yorker headed down South to start an accounting firm. Would I even be able to find somebody capable of doing math? When I got there, I was led across the parking lot blindfolded. I was sure I would die. But, when we got inside and the blindfold was removed, there was a big chocolate cake that said “Welcome Boss” on it. So, the people were great—all the stereotypes melted away, leaving a good feeling. But, there was one thing that left a bad feeling: the food. Chicken Fried Steak, Grits, Iced Tea day and night—an over-sweetened endless amber river, Alligator n’ Eggs, Biscuits ‘n Gravy, Catfish and hush puppies. I went to MacDonalds as often as I could, but it didn’t work.

Eventually, I finished the job and came back to New York. I started thinking about having an onion bagel with lox and cream cheese somewhere over Georgia. For me, the bagel is the pinnacle of New York cuisine. I literally ran to Bella’s Bagels when I got out of my cab. I tore open the door and the smell was so beautiful I almost fainted. I ordered my onion bagel and lox with cream cheese. When I bit in, it was like kissing an angel. I ordered a bag of plain bagels. I was home again!

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

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Apostrophe

Posted on March 19, 2023 | Leave a comment

Apostrophe (a-pos’-tro-phe): Turning one’s speech from one audience to another. Most often, apostrophe occurs when one addresses oneself to an abstraction, to an inanimate object, or to the absent.

I have loved and lost, but I’ve never lost my love for my slippers. Oh slippers! You comfort my feet. You wrap them with warmth. All day Saturday. All day Sunday. You deliver me from going outside in the heat of summer, and in winter’s bitter cold. I give thanks to the sheep who made the ultimate sacrifice to line you with fluffiness and the softness of all-natural materials.

Oh blessed slippers. I remember the box you came in, Wrapped in paper printed with holly sprigs and bright red holly berries—so festive, so apt for the season. I tore off the paper and opened the box. I almost wet my New York Yankees pajamas. But I held it. Running to the bathroom, I could think of nothing but pulling you onto my feet—beginning a relationship with depth, and warmth, and non-skid adventures on my home’s wooden floors—no more wearing socks and sliding into the wall when I try to catch my cat Vertigo to give him a good brushing.

But oh, yon footwear, sweet sole cushion, partner in leisure, vessel of perfect warmth, I must bid farewell. It is with tears in my eyes that I say goodbye. Your leather has stretched and you are I’ll-fitting. Your lining has worn away and you are no longer a conduit for warmth and joy. Your upper parts are irretrievably soiled, and I confess, smell a little.

But our goodbye, is not altogether bad for you. I am donating you to the Salvation Army Thrift Store. Henceforth, you will be reincarnated. You will don the the feet of another man—a very very fortunate man. He will lift you from the shoe shelf, put you on, and walk up and down the footwear aisle—he will say “Mmm” and head to the check-out counter, clutching you tightly with his calloused hands.

Life goes on. My new slippers coming from L.L. Bean are due in the mail today. They are made from all-organic materials. They are waterproof, shock proof, and change colors with the temperature. With a heavy heart, I box up my old slippers. We go to the drop-off dock. I hand over the box. At the last minute, I pull it away and run to my car.

My slippers are retired. They spend their days and nights on a special shoe rack in my closet. My new slippers are ok, but there’s something about them that I can’t put my finger on.

My old slippers have taught me that things change. We must learn to let go, but not completely.

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

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Apothegm

Posted on March 18, 2023 | Leave a comment

Apothegm (a’-po-th-e-gem): One of several terms describing short, pithy sayings. Others include adage, gnome, maxim, paroemia, proverb, and sententia.

“If you can’t stand the heat, sit down.” This is one of those enigmatic sayings you’re supposed to figure out on your way to enlightenment. It is so humorous to see people eating vegetable, getting rid of their shoes and wearing exotic clothes discussing this and other sayings with their doped up friends, saying “Wow” over and over while they speculate on the sayings’ meanings. They are like crackpot kindergarteners, sitting in a circle on the playground, practicing their animal sounds. Oink. Moo. Baa.

This morning I heard this one: “When your soup is cold, heat it.” They tried to figure out what they thought were the saying’s metaphors by focusing first on “soup,” the saying’s key term. Instead of taking it literally, with their brains fogged with THC, they had to go down the road of free range speculation as if did not really matter if they derived meaning from the saying at all. It was like the communal querying was an end in itself, where generating a quantity of meanings was more important than generating “the” meaning.

I confirmed this with the group’s leader Elvis Mandela. He told me: “The storming of the brain is like the storming of the sky. Trying to make sense that satisfies most people but collectively bruises the brain like a blow to a banana. We want a disparate jumble of non-synonymous, non-commensurate, clashing, yet peacefully offered meanings that get to our uniqueness as human life-forms, oops, I meant to say “human beings.”

I noticed there was a poorly concealed zipper on Elvis Mandela’s forehead. I reached for it and was able ti zip it down to his upper lip before he squirmed away and stood up. “Fool!” he yelled. “Now, The Dogs Will Eat Their Plastic Bones.” I had no idea what the hell he was talking about. His follows were coming toward him. They were gnawing on plastic bones and moaning in unison. At this point, I yelled as loud as I could, “Cut the shit!” They immediately dropped bones. The started chanting, “Elvis Mandela is a fraud. He hides behind a zipper.” I looked at his unzipped face again—it was Mow Carlisle, the boy who had gone missing 10 years ago when he was delivering papers on his paper route. I asked Mow what had happened. He said he found the rubber suit in a trashcan and put it on. Wearing it, he felt safe. It stretched with him over the years as he grew. From his paper route he learned to respect cryptic headlines as inducements to read what was below. So, he started making cryptic sayings and yelling them to people as they passed by. Soon a crowd gathered and he herded them to the park, where his theory of heterogenous interpretationism was born.

I zipped Elvis’ face back up and his followers started peacefully returning. As I walked away I thought to myself, “The bird is the word.”

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

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