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Expeditio

Posted on August 15, 2023 | Leave a comment

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

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

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

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

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

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

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Exuscitatio

Posted on August 14, 2023 | Leave a comment

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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Gnome

Posted on August 13, 2023 | Leave a comment

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

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

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

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

Unlike my father.

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

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

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

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Graecismus

Posted on August 12, 2023 | Leave a comment

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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Hendiadys

Posted on August 11, 2023 | Leave a comment

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

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

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

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

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

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

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Heterogenium

Posted on August 10, 2023 | Leave a comment

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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Homoeopropophoron

Posted on August 9, 2023 | Leave a comment

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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Homoioteleuton

Posted on August 7, 2023 | Leave a comment

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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Horismus

Posted on August 6, 2023 | Leave a comment

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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Hypallage

Posted on August 5, 2023 | Leave a comment

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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Hyperbaton

Posted on August 4, 2023 | Leave a comment

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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Hypozeuxis

Posted on August 3, 2023 | Leave a comment

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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Hysterologia

Posted on August 2, 2023 | Leave a comment

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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Hysteron Proteron

Posted on August 1, 2023 | Leave a comment

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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Inopinatum

Posted on July 31, 2023 | Leave a comment

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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Inter se pugnantia

Posted on July 30, 2023 | Leave a comment

Inter se pugnantia (in’-ter-say-pug-nan’-ti-a): Using direct address to reprove someone before an audience, pointing out the contradictions in that person’s character, often between what a person does and says.

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

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

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

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

The roar of the racetrack helped me today

When we put my Daddy away

He’ll be drivin’ in heaven

On the love we gave him

‘Round and ‘round forever he’ll go

Always fast, never slow

He’s a NASCAR Angel, drivin’ with God

We stand for you Daddy and give you a nod

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

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

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

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Intimation

Posted on July 29, 2023 | Leave a comment

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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Isocolon

Posted on July 28, 2023 | Leave a comment

Isocolon (i-so-co’-lon): A series of similarly structured elements having the same length. A kind of parallelism.

Wind. Rain. Snow. With climate change, that’s what we get here all in one day. Arizona has gone weather crazy. Last week, we had a hurricane, a tornado, and an earthquake on Tuesday. I’m not sure if an earthquake is a result of climate change, but I don’t care. A huge crevasse opened under the “Only True Evangelical Resurrectional Sanctuary of the Blood-Soaked Cross.” Rev. Natas told us the earthquake had put climate change on a spiritual footing: “Aside from Noah’s cloudburst, message have always been delivered by God by cracks and fissures in the earth, giving us a glimpse of the hell below us. If you look under the church, you may get a glimpse of the imps and demons living under our feet, and where most of us will reach our ultimate fate as minions serving Satan in hell’s “Home Style Buffett” where things are always steaming hot, even the ice cream.”

“What a lunar bird the Rev. is” I thought to myself, but I went and looked into the fissure anyway. It was smoking and glowing through the smoke. I heard soft moaning sounds coming from deep down in the fissure. The smoke was making me cough, so I had to step away. I decided the moaning was just the wind blowing through the hole. As I walked away, a giant bolt of lightning hit the ground around 10 feet away. I felt the electric current. My hair was singed off and my shorts and t-shirt were shredded. I was still standing and couldn’t believe that I wasn’t seriously injured. I turned around and Rev. Natas was nowhere to be seen.

There was a red telephone booth standing there like they used to have back in the day in England. So fat she filled the phone booth with her bulk, there was a woman dressed as a cowgirl talking on the phone. She held the phone out to me and said “It’s for you partner.” I held out my hand and took the phone. The energetic voice at the other end said, “Hello Mr. Graff! You’ve won an all-expense paid trip down into the crevasse. You will be treated to a “Body Bake” and a “Soul Roll” free of charge. Just jump in the hole and you’re on your way!”

I dropped the phone and ran home as fast as I could. I was exhausted and went to bed at 4:00 in the afternoon. I woke up at 3:00 am and looked outside. It was raining, snowing, sleeting and hailing. This was the craziest weather I’d ever seen. Climate change was making progress. Suddenly, it started raining cats and dogs. All breeds, ages, and sizes. They hit the ground softly and walked away. This was surely the beginning of the end of the world.

My phone rang. I answered it and it was the telemarketer from hell. He told me he could grant me immortality if I would “make the jump, and take the leap of faith.” I hung up and ran outside and picked up the cute little puppy that had just dropped out of the sky. I named him “Stormy” and I knew we were going to have some good times together, if we survived. .

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

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Kategoria

Posted on July 27, 2023 | Leave a comment

Kategoria (ka-te-go’-ri-a): Opening the secret wickedness of one’s adversary before his [or her] face.

I thought I knew you. I knew what you liked to wear: Chanel. I knew what you liked to drink: Dom Perignon. I knew what you liked to eat: Porterhouse Steak with Truffle Butter. I knew what you liked to drive: a Mercedes Maybach. I knew your favorite place to live: Paris. I knew your favorite book: “Atlas Shrugged.” I knew your favorite movie: “Nightmare on Elm Street.”

I could go on for ten pages of “what you like.” But you already know what you like—it’s no mystery to you. But after scanning the ensemble of things and preferences, I realized too late that I don’t know you! I thought I married you. I thought I fell in love with you. I thought I lived with you.

I’ve been watching you and spying on you since you came back from the grocery store with your skirt on backward. I asked you how it happened and you told me it was “the wind” in the parking lot, that your chauffeur Brino had to cart you to the car and lay you down on the seat, where your skirt probably got turned around. You credited Brino with saving your life. But we both know there was no wind. We both know you’re lying.

Then you stayed out all night. You told me you were running in a marathon and got lost. Your phone went dead and you were panic- stricken, afraid you may be assaulted or mauled by one of the viscous dogs that lives by the beach. Once again, you credited Brino with saving you and taking you to his mother’s home for the night. But we both know there was no marathon. We both know there’s no “Brino’s mother.” We both know you’re lying. Then there’s my gold Rolex that disappeared. The next day, I noticed that Brino was wearing a gold Rolex. You told me he had gotten it for his birthday from his brother. But we both know there was no birthday or brother. We both know you’re lying.

I said, “Now I think I know you: You’re a cheater and a liar.” At this point my wife started crying. She sobbed: “I’m no good. I’m rotten. I stink.” I said, “Ok. I’ll add that to cheater and liar, and I’ll have a really good idea of who you are.”

I anguished all night. For some bizarre reason I couldn’t live without her. It was like I had reconciled myself to taking a small dose of poison every day. First thing the next morning, I met with an “associate” of mine from Palermo and hired him to do a hit on Brino. That would solve the cheating problem; maybe the lying problem too. I resolved that our next chauffeur would be a young blonde woman with an open heart.

But alas. Brino got wind of my plan and stole the Mercedes and a cooler full of Porterhouse steaks. My traitorous wife went with him. I told my associate from Palermo, if he could bag them both, he could keep the car and the steaks for himself.

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

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Litotes

Posted on July 26, 2023 | Leave a comment

Litotes (li-to’-tees): 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).

How undeserving. How unworthy. How embarrassed by all this. I say “So what?” I am half the man you think I am. I’m “not what I’m cracked up to be.” I didn’t build anything, but I did make a difference—a minimal difference that destroyed as much as it produced, showing everything has two sides, at least. You’re all sitting here in rags with rice bowls hanging around your necks because of what I did—but instead of wanting to kill me, you want to hug me. And I should give credit to my imp friend Harry Stillskin, sitting over there with his hand on my wife, who helped me pull it all together.

I was stumbling through life with no direction when I met Harry perched on a stool at The Blue Moon Bar and Grill here in Lodi. I sat down next to him and he bought me a beer. He asked me to guess his name. He was wearing a bowling shirt that said Harry on it. So I said, “Harry?” He said, “Damn, that’s right. I should’ve listened to my wife—she told me not to wear my bowling shirt when I wasn’t with my buddies.” We drank a few more beers and got half-loaded. Harry asked me what I did for a living. As a joke, I told him I was a deep-sea diver. He looked shocked. He told me that salt water would set him on fire, so he had to stay from the ocean. I thought he was kidding me, so I let it pass. He told me he was in the kidnapping business. Now, the bullshit was getting out of hand. I ordered two more beers and asked him to elaborate.

He told me he had a spinning wheel that had been in his family for hundreds of years. The spinning wheel spun gold! He would find desperate mothers and make a deal: He would take the babies and spin gold. If the mother could guess his name, she would get to keep the gold and get her baby back. If she failed guess his name, he would keep the baby and the gold. He said it was surprising how few women could guess his name. One would think that “Harry” would be pretty easy to guess. He sold the babies to a baby broker in Canada, no questions asked.

I was stunned. “Bullshit!” was all I could think to say. With slightly slurred speech Harry said, “Oh yeah? Come on. Let’s take a walk.” We walked up the street and came to an old barn—a vestige of Lodi’s horse and buggy days. Harry waved at the door and it slowly opened. Inside there was a spinning wheel, an executive leather swivel chair, a wooden stool and a crib. God! He wasn’t kidding. He churned out a couple of ounces of gold and we split them 50-50. I asked him if we could hire a crew to spin night and day and Harry said “Ok.” So, that’s what we did out of sheer greed. But then, we had so much gold that we bagged it up and dumped it all over Lodi, and then all over the US. Our spinners had come under some kind of spell and couldn’t stop spinning.

The rest is history.

The world was glutted with gold. The price plummeted to 10 cents per ounce. Paper money lost it’s value, among other things, it was used as kindling to start fires. Bartering made a comeback. We have learned to do without. I am valorized for causing a worldwide economic collapse (along with Harry). But, so much good has come of it. When we’re all poor, everybody’s poor. We achieve an equality of misery and freedom from the nagging hunger for material gain. We may be ill-clothed and hungry all the time, but at least we’re all still alive (with the exception of the infirm and the elderly).

Harry and I are so undeserving. Really, it’s our out-of-control gold spinners who made all this happen. So let’s raise a toast to them, resting in their urns in the showcase back there. It was the only way to stop them. .

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

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Martyria

Posted on July 25, 2023 | Leave a comment

Martyria (mar-tir’-i-a): Confirming something by referring to one’s own experience.

“I’ve seen it all now.” That’s what my father would say when he saw something that was unusual, or he hadn’t seen before. Or, he might say “l’ll be” leaving off the “damned” out of respect for Mother, who did not allow swearing within 15 feet of wherever she was. I was frequently the target of Dad’s wonder. He hardly paid attention to me otherwise, smoking cigarettes and sipping gin and tonics—in the living room, on the porch, in the yard, in the car. We got an automatic shift car just so he could drink and drive with fewer hassles. He never drove fast, keeping it under 10 mph. Once we hit a tree on the way to Cliffs and it didn’t even damages the car. People would blow their horns at us, but Dad would just give them the finger out the window and motion them to pass.

In my continuing quest to get his attention, I tried for an “I’ll be” from Dad every day.

I had found dad’s loaded shotgun in the basement and decided I would shoot one of the songbirds that frequented the trees in our yard. I took the gun up to my room and looked for an article on how to shoot a gun in my back issues of Boy’s Life Magazine. I looked and looked and couldn’t find anything. No luck. But I remembered that my “Cisco Kid” comics had a lot of gun play. I got the basic idea—you aim and pull what is called “the trigger.” I was ready. I came out the front door carrying the gun. Mom and Aunt Ethyl screamed and ran away. I aimed at the tree in the front yard and Dad said “I’ll be.” I pulled the trigger, but it wouldn’t move. There was a little thing that looked like a slider button. I lowered the gun and pushed it toward the front of the gun. Then, I pulled the trigger without thinking about aiming. The gun went off. It blew a 3” hole in the door of our Chevy coupe. You could see a carton of Luckies on seat through the hole. I dropped the gun and started running to the The Church of the Genuine Icon where I would seek sanctuary from my father and the police, like the hunchback in the movie. Father Pringle told me the church wasn’t allowed to offer sanctuary anymore due to the flood of maladjusted teens that had begun overwhelming the church in the late 1940s. “Those WW11 vets were a wild bunch,” said Father Pringle shaking his head. “Gee Father Pringle, that doesn’t help me!” He said, “Ok, ok. Go in the men’s room and rapidly pull three sheets from the toilet paper dispenser at the same time as you flush the toilet. A secret passage will open.” I did as he told me, and boom, a passage opened. I could hide for a couple of days while things cooled off.

I was sitting there wondering who kept the torches lit when the secret door swung open and there was Dad. He said “I’ll be. Son, you’re gonna have to work after school until you can pay for a new car door.” Then, he started laughing—his laughter echoed off the catacomb walls—built and doubled and tripled, and suddenly we were surrounded by spirits in motorcycle jackets and boots wearing Levi prototypes and pastel-colored motorcycle hats emblazoned with winged motorcycle tires. They were holding chains and tire irons. Father Pringle came running through the door and flipped on the electric lights. The spirits vanished.

Father Pringle apologized for not telling me to flip on the lights to ward off the spirits. I told him I didn’t care and Dad said “I’ll be.” It had been a banner day, from start to finish. I stood there looking at the Church of the Genuine Icon. I turned to Dad and said “I’ll be.” He smiled at me and said, “I’ve seen it all now.”

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

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Maxim

Posted on July 24, 2023 | Leave a comment

Maxim (max’-im): One of several terms describing short, pithy sayings. Others include adage, apothegm, gnome, paroemia, proverb, and sententia.

“Life is a landfill.” I grew up in poverty. I came of age in poverty. I am still in poverty. I will always be in poverty. I know what it’s like to have one uncooked turnip between four people. The gas and electricity have been shut off for weeks. My mom tells us we’re having “crunchy turnip” and we all pretend it’s the best thing ever, even though it gives us diarrhea and we only have one bathroom. We’re lucky we live in Florida or we would need shoes and winter clothes. I have a pair of flip flops and hand-me-down gym shorts that I hold up with a duct tape belt. In addition I have three t-shirts. My favorite one has a picture on the front of Nickerson’s Hardware Store with a woman in a bathing suit swinging a hammer and smiling.

The technical term for Dad is “lout.” He stands on the front porch and calls people names as they run past the house trying to avoid him. He called my teacher “Ms. Dipstick” as she ran by. She stopped and turned and yelled back “You’re a pimple on the butt of humanity!” Nobody had ever had the nerve to yell back at him. Everybody stopped running and turned toward my father, and waited. They weren’t disappointed. Dad turned and whipped out his butt and yelled “Kiss this!” Ms. Cornweather gave him a double middle finger and continued on her way. She had earned my undying respect. After that, Dad threw cherry bombs off the porch at passers by. It’s a wonder that nobody called the police. Some people thought he was in cahoots with them. He had served on the police force for two weeks. He had “executed” a Poodle named Pierre for what he called “homicidal barking.” Of course, the Poodle’s owner demanded that Dad be terminated. When the man came to the police station to register his complaint, Dad taunted him by speaking in a French accent: “Are vous upsetez mon-sewer? Havez some soufflé.” The owner of the Poodle lunged for Dad and grabbed Dad’s gun. He pointed it at dad and said “Now you die, you murderer.” Dad barked at him and held his hands up like cute little paws. The man dropped the gun and left the police station sobbing. Dad was fired on the spot. Dad’s brother, Mayor Weed. He made sure Dad wasn’t charged with anything and was given a commendation for “protecting and defending.”

Mayor Weed is our landlord. We have never paid rent because there are “certain secrets” that Dad knows. We try to prod them out of Dad. All he will say is “I don’t want him to go to prison.” That’s a pretty big hint! Mom always says “You have to humiliate me, don’t you?” It’s pretty intense.

Last night, I fell through the living room floor and landed on the washing machine in the basement. The house has termites. The Mayor rented us two anteaters from the Zoo. We keep them in the basement and they do good job with termites that fall out of the ceiling beams, but there’s no way for them to get up into the beams. I looked in “Popular Mechanics” and found plans for an Anteater beam ramp. I’m on my way to Nickerson’s hardware store to try to steal the components, and also, possibly meet the girl on my T-shirt. I started a fire in a back room, grabbed everything I needed and made my way home. The girl hadn’t been there. I was disappointed, but I wouldn’t let it kill me.

I got the ramps built and you could hear the anteaters grunting and skittering up and down them night and day. They were getting fat. Then it happened! The Mayor, “out of respect for my father” was giving me a job he called “No Show.” I was responsible for “staying away” and being paid by direct deposit every week. That was pretty good. I am writing a book now. It’s titled “Blackmail” and Dad is helping me. Our two rental anteaters are going to town. They’ve started sticking their heads though the hole in the living room floor with their little babies, and making little whiny sounds.

By the way, we’re still living in poverty. Since I got the “No Show” job the Mayor has made us start paying rent.

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

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Medela

Posted on July 23, 2023 | Leave a comment

Medela (me-de’-la): When you can’t deny or defend friends’ faults and seek to heal them with good words.

You’re not funny. With all your comedy stylings the only thing that’s made me laugh is your ineptitude. You can’t even do a knock knock joke right. Like this one you recently told at a party: “A man with a kaleidoscope walks into a bar. Who’s there?” Somebody said: “A man with a kaleidoscope?” Everybody laughed at you. The was no knock knock. You should stop telling jokes.

There are so many other things that you’re good at. One thing’s for sure, you’re good at using your electric can opener! You can make a can rotate without spilling a drop! Same goes for pop tops. POW! Goes the soda can when you pull the ring. Same goes for sardines—I’ve seen you pop a sardine can with sardines packed in mustard without dripping it all over the kitchen counter like Joey does. He’s such a slob—he never wipes up his trail of spills. The cat ends up licking it up and puking in a corner of the living room.

Another thing: you’re good at walking. You go in a solid straight line, unless there are obstacles in your way, like your baby Buster playing on the floor, or a toy, or a pair of shoes, or an empty gin bottle—you go around them. You’ve only stumbled over Buster once, and that was at night. Remember? You forgot to put him in his crib when you passed out on the couch. When you got up to pee, you kicked him a across the living room. At least you didn’t step on him. That might’ve killed him. But you know, you learned a lesson from nearly killing Buster, and that’s really good.

But, do you know what you are really, really good at? Being a contentious pain in the ass. When was the last time you agreed with me about anything? You want to argue about the day of the week, the time of day, how old you really are. It is maddening, but it has made me a better attorney. When I point out that everything is contestable, the prosecution is visibly shaken. When the prosecution says “The defendant was seen exiting the liquor store waving a pistol with one hand and clutching a wad of cash and lotto tickets with the other,” I say “Everything is contestable. Try and prove it. I bet you can’t. Nah! Nah! I’m waiting. Cat got your tongue bumpy butt?” It never works, but it makes me feel tough and strong. Being in contempt of court is a badge of honor for me and a testament to the positive influence your craziness exerts on me. That brings me to your talking to yourself, or should I say to “Sir Dottlescone” your imaginary lord protector from the 15th century.

When you converse, your British accent is quite good. I don’t know about Sir Dottlescone, because I can’t hear him. But, I believe he frequently tells you to do naughty things like steal cars and stand naked in your bedroom window. Our cul-de-sac has been packed with hooting teenagers and neighbors have been standing on their sidewalks in awe for 2 weeks now. Thank God, Sir Dottlescone hasn’t told you to kill anybody. Although I did hear you say something about “the rude shelf stocker at Wegmans” and how he should be flayed. But your dramatic skills are admirable—the one-sided impromptu dialogues with nobody who is actually there, are amazing. It’s like a two-sided soliloquy.

Anyway, now you can see—you stink at comedy, but you’re great at other things. We’ll keep you off of your medication so you can continue to pursue those “other things” without missing a beat. Can you ask Sir Dottlescone where my credit card is?

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

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Meiosis

Posted on July 22, 2023 | Leave a comment

Meiosis (mei-o’-sis): Reference to something with a name disproportionately lesser than its nature (a kind of litotes). This term is equivalent to tapinosis.

I called my dirty room “the dust mote bar and grill” making it seem less of a mess than it actually was. I’ve never been to a bar & grill but I liked the idea of eating and drinking at the same time. I was 12 and I had “borrowed” 2 beers at the last 4th of July family gathering and had eaten four snappy grillers. I was half-drunk when I asked my Aunt Betty to take walk to the lake with me. She called me a naughty boy and laughed and patted me on the head. I continued to the lake by myself. Frustrated. As I neared the lake, I started to remember. It was difficult, but I couldn’t push it out of my head.

I was 7 years old. After a year of promising “next weekend” my father was finally going to take me fishing at Lake Hoppaclang—one of Central New Jersey’s most beautiful lakes. It even had an amusement park on an island. The only condition for dad taking me fishing was that my little brother Don be allowed to come along. Don was what we called “a piece of work.” One of our biggest hopes was that he would learn to tie his own shoes some day and stop shuffling around inside the house saying he was a cha-cha train, and each room in the house a stop on his railroad line. For example, he would say: “Arriving at the kitchen. Next stop, downstairs bathroom. Watch your step.” This went on all day. It made my mother crazy. I heard my parents talking one night about how to suffocate a person in bed with their pillow. Dad was in favor, but mom wasn’t. She ran the show so Don got a reprieve.

We got up a 4:00 am. There was Don with his stupid looking overalls and dirty stuffed bunny that he said he was going to marry when he grew up. There was a half-bottle of rum on the kitchen table and dad looked like he was going to have a heart attack—he looked sort of gray and he was pounding on his chest. He said “Jesus! Let’s get the goddamn show on the road.” We had bought kids cheap “Donald Duck” fishing poles, hooks, bobbers, and sinkers at Walmart, and a cardboard quart container of worms at the gas station.

We got to Lake Hoppaclang just as the sun was rising. It was beautiful and quiet. There was a long dock with small 12-14 fit boats chained to it. As dad got out of the car he said “Hand me those bolt cutters on the floor.” Dad took the bolt cutters and walked down the dock like he was shopping. He settled on a nice looking aluminum boat. He knelt down and “liberated” it with one stroke of the bolt cutters. He motioned me and Don out onto the dock. We jumped in the boat and he pulled the rope on the outboard motor. It started right up and we headed out onto the lake. Don said “I am a fish.” He was about to jump overboard when I grabbed him by the leg. He threw a handful of worms at me and my father called him a moron, and my dad was right. He was a moron. He started punching his stuffed bunny and calling it a moron until my father handed him a fishing pole and told him to “catch a a friggin’ fish” and called him a moron again.

We drifted around the lake and caught at least 75 sunfish. They covered the bottom of the boat—dull-eyed and drying out in the sun. All-of-sudden dad stood up and said “Look at this!” He had a dead sunfish in his hand, holding it like a skipping stone. He threw it and it skipped at least six times. He picked up another one, tripped over Don and fell out of the boat. Dad could doggy paddle, but not for long. He was way overdue for a heart attack. We had no life-jackets or any other kind of flotation devices. The boat was drifting away from dad. Don was clapping his hands and saying “Dad will have big drink of lake and go bye-bye.” I told him to shut up and called him a moron—I was in charge now.

We had drifted around 50 feet from dad. He had taken all of his clothes off, but he was still starting to sink. I pulled the rope on the outboard motor. It started, I pushed the lever on the side forward and we started moving. I twisted the motor’s handle and we started speeding toward dad. He was waving his arms and yelling “No, no, no!” Don was throwing sunfish overboard and making a barking noise.

As we neared dad, I saw we weren’t going to hit him, but we were going to come really close. I told Don to throw the boat’s tie-up chain at dad as we went by. He said “Ok” so I thought he might have understood me. When we went by dad, Don threw the chain. It hit dad in the head and wrapped around his neck. Dad managed to loosen it enough so it wouldn’t strangle him. We were towing dad to shore. We were lucky because I didn’t know how to steer the boat. We drove up on shore and dad stood in the waist-deep water. He ran to the boat and picked up the fishing poles and told me to grab the bolt cutters. We ran to the car and burned rubber as we sped away. That was the last time we ever went fishing.

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

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Mempsis

Posted on July 21, 2023 | Leave a comment

Mempsis (memp’-sis): Expressing complaint and seeking help.

I can’t believe how lost I am. I never should’ve gone to the Magnificent Mega-Mega Mall. I need a map, but the Mall’s map racks are empty. The personnel wear uniforms like movie theatre ushers wore back in the day—blue military-looking uniforms with brass buttons and epaulets that look like hairbrushes with gold bristles. The uniformed mall workers are no where to be seen. I’ve tried to ask my fellow shoppers where the hell I am, but they just keep walking by me like so many shopping zombies.

I’m hauling heavy loot on my mall scooter which, by the way has a broken GPS. It keeps saying I’m in Lima, Ohio when I’m actually in Short Hills, New Jersey. What a piece of crap. I’m carrying a portable window air conditioner on my lap. My mall scooter’s battery light is flashing red. I probably have a mile left with power. Then iI’ll be stranded in the biggest mall in the world. From entrance to exit, it extends for 5 miles. The architecture is like a funnel that makes you traverse the entire mall before you could exit. They had jitneys, but they were nowhere to be seen..

The Mall covers over land where I went rabbit hunting with by Beagle Buddy when I was a kid. I also went bow hunting for deer in the woods surrounding the fields. There were apple trees left from long-gone orchards. But, the trees still gave delicious juicy Cortland apples. I would go there with my Radio Flyer wagon and pick apples and haul them home where Ma and I would make applesauce and a couple of apple pies every fall.

I passed a sign: Exit: 2 miles. There had to be emergency exits nearby, but they were unmarked and I couldn’t see them. The red light on the mall scooter was flashing faster and showing a message that said “Charge me Now!” I thought that was pretty demanding. I looked around for a charging port, but didn’t see one. I didn’t need the damn scooter anyway. I admit it: I faked an infirmity whenever I went to the mall. I was actually in pretty good shape. So, I got off the scooter and stored my air conditioner in a nearby janitor’s closest, and covered it with rags. I looked for a jitney. Nothing, so I started walking, pushing past whole families walking slowly and looking straight ahead. Suddenly, I heard a humming sound behind me!

It was the mall scooter driving itself. It was going slowly and the red light had stopped blinking. It was following me! Then, it talked in the robot kind of voice that’s used in science fiction movies. “You we’re not authorized to ride me. You must come with me to mall security for your trial.” I ran. The scooter chased me and butted me from behind, making me fall backwards into the scooter’s seat, where a seatbelt shot across my lap and cinched me in. I was trapped. I asked the scooter if I would be supplied a lawyer. He laughed a creepy robot laugh and increased our speed.

We arrived at Mall Security. There was a mall cop sitting behind a messy dest wearing a white wig, like a British barrister. He said, “You are charged with the unauthorized use of a mall scooter. How do you plead: guilty or not guilty?” I said “not guilty” even though I was lying and everybody knew it. The cop said: “The court finds you guilty. You will be sentenced after I take a quick smoke break.” I was furious. “This is total bullshit. Who the hell do you think you are?” He looked me like he wanted spray mace in my face: “Look wise guy, the Mayor of Short Hills has given us control over the mall and meting out mall justice. That scooter you’re sitting on doubles as an electric chair. Do you want to fry, Mr. Scooter Stealer? Or, are you going to wait for your sentence.” I just shut up and waited for my sentence.

I’m serving my sentence as an H&M sales associate. For six weeks, I’m selling dumb-ass clothes to tasteless teenagers. “My” scooter visits me every once-in-while. All it says is, “Did you learn your lesson yet?”

For some reason, I’ve used my H&M employee discount to buy myself a full-length black pleather trench-coat that smells a little bit like motor oil. I wear it as a bathrobe at home, and also to mow the lawn, and go grocery shopping.

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

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

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