Tag Archives: trope

Mesarchia

Posted on July 19, 2023 | Leave a comment

Mesarchia (mes-ar’-chi-a): The repetition of the same word or words at the beginning and middle of successive sentences.

I drove a truck. I drove a truck to hell and back. I drove the truck wherever I could get asphalt, dirt, or concrete under my tires. My truck was a mansion dedicated to St. Christopher, the patron saint of travelers, keeping them safe and from getting lost. Behind my seat I had my sleeping chateau. When I was done driving, or tired, I retreated to the chateau. It was completely dark—not a shred of light. It was soundproofed—I could pull over anywhere and shut ‘er down for some shut eye. I had a water bed with black satin sheets and pillowcases. I slept under a Spider-Man comforter in my Carlos Santana pajamas imprinted with “A Black Magic Women” from the song—which I love. My mattress sat on a hinged lid with an electric motor that raised and lowered it. Underneath was a tanning bed I used to keep from getting a prison tan—a hazard of truck driving, where your cab can be likened to a cell. I had a 35” plasma TV at the foot of my bed where I could pick up Amazon Prime, and local programming. There’s a weight-lifting set at the head of my bed, which I use for bench pressing. There’s also a reading light. Currently, I’m reading Hemingway’s “Men Without Women.” The ceiling has a moon roof I can open and watch stars at night—I love counting shooting stars. But, when I close it, it completely blocks out the light.

In the cab, I have a microwave and a mini fridge, and a two-burner stove built into the dashboard where I make coffee and hot coco, and sometimes, soup. I eat mainly microwave dinners, so I don’t have any dishes—just a couple of bowls. My truck’s name (painted booth fenders) is “Flying Iron.” I like to think of my truck as capable flight. Then, I could pick up and deliver across the Atlantic and Pacific Oceans—to England and Malaysia. But, I’m just a cross-country trucker, a prisoner of RTE 80. I know every inch of it, every piece of unpicked-up litter, and enduring, unmoving, roadkills.

Driving at night across desolate stretches of RTE 80 can make you start seeing things that may not, or may, actually be there, like outside Winslow, AZ. It’s like the moon with underbrush. It was around 3:00 am and I was headed for Tahoe, a pretty good stretch. A turquoise 1961-or so Corvair panel truck came shooting out of the sky and landed in front of me. I slammed on the brakes and jumped out. Richard Nixon stepped out of the panel truck wearing lederhosen with a white shirt, vintage hiking boots, a German alpine hat with a feather in it, and an American flag pin pinned to his lederhosen’s suspenders. He said, “I’m not a crook.” Then raised two hands in peace signs, got back in the Corvair, and out stepped what was clearly a space alien.

He looked like he was made from Navy Blue modeling clay. His eyes were tiny little red beads that were very shiny. He was at least 7 feet tall and wearing lederhosen and a feather hat like Nixon’s. He didn’t need hiking boots—his feet were hiking boots. He said: “Nixon is doing well. He still insists he’s innocent. I have failed to change his mind, but we believe he is lying. Sometimes my job as intergalactic Nixon minder is boring. We’ve just been to the dark side of the moon to a music festival. There we are and Nixon’s walking around passing out his “I’m not a crook” flyers. He paused, though, when the (translated) “Pings” started playing (translated) “Outer Space.” The song questions the hegemonic foundation of the ethnocentric naming of my habitat, i.e., “Outer Space.” He told me that “outer” implies an origin that privileges a place in the universe.”

Suddenly, there was a flash of bright blue light and the Corvair was gone. I got back in Flying Iron and sat there, trying to make sense of what I just experienced. I couldn’t. So, I put the key in the ignition, started my truck, and headed for Tahoe. First, I stuck the feather I had found by my truck into the sun visor. It looked familiar.

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

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Posted in mesarchia

Tagged elocutio, figures of speech, rhetoric, trope

Mesozeugma

Posted on July 17, 2023 | Leave a comment

Mesozeugma (me’-so-zyoog’-ma): A zeugma in which one places a common verb for many subjects in the middle of a construction.

I was going to the park, to the mall, to the community swimming pool, to Cliff’s, to the landfill. I suffered from Chronic Wandering Syndrome, or CWS. It is a curse. When I was a kid my parents would have to call the police for help finding me. They’d fan out all over town. They never found me in the same place twice. Once they found me in the walk-in humidor adjacent to the gas station on the Native American reservation. I loved the smell of cigar tobacco. Once they found me on top of the town water tower basking in the sun in my gym shorts. Once they found me under a picnic table in the town park. I was pretending to be a dog begging for table scraps while a family played along, feeding me a hot dog and some macaroni salad under the table while they enjoyed their meal together. The little boy named me Roscoe and I would yip when he called my name.

As I got older, my CWS worsened. I could ride my bicycle to wander. I never knew were I was going, but I always ended up somewhere, for better and for worse. The most memorable was the Hippy camp outside of town. It was called Rainbow Binge. At least 50 Hippies lived there—whole families and pets too. I met a girl named Potatochontas. She was beautiful. She had purple hair. She wore a dress made out of a flour sack and she was barefoot. She told me is was time for her to take her medicine. She asked me if I wanted some too. I said “Yes!” And she handed me a little piece of paper with the Disney character Goofy’s picture on it. “Just put it on your tongue,” she said. I did, and we sat there. About ten minutes later she turned into a giant bullet. I hugged her, hoping she would fire. She didn’t. Instead I became a bottle of raw milk and I was begging for her to shake me. She grabbed me by the neck and started shaking me up and down. She shook me too hard and I turned into a slice of American cheese, and then a Persian carpet decorated with Humvees and helicopters. She sat on me and wept. I needed to get out of there, but I did not know where I was going next. I got on my bike—it had turned into uncooked spaghetti. I rode away on it anyway, following the road’s white line, hoping I wouldn’t be killed. The police found me jumping up and down on a trampoline at “Lucky Bounce” trampoline park, wearing only gym shorts with a peace symbol painted on my chest.

I was institutionalized. My therapy consisted of “travel agency” where, before I was allowed to go anywhere, I had to tell my therapist where I was going, how long it would take to get there, why I’m going and when I will return. Given the range of destinations at “Mind Passages Mental Facility” there weren’t many opportunities to work on itinerary building, but I did my best. I did well at bathroom, my room and cafeteria. Then, my parents’ insurance ran out. I was discharged with a roadmap and a pair of very good quality walking shoes, but I didn’t know where to go, so I wandered off. My parents had given up. I knew they had stopped retrieving me. It was sad, but necessary. Anyway, I was 25 years old.

I wandered onto a university campus and into the Human Resources office. I told them I was wandering. “Oh, you must be Professor Wandering, the new hire in the English Department” said the receptionist. “We’ve been trying to reach you for a week. I’m glad you’re safe and sound. Your students are waiting for you in ADMIN 312. Your class ‘From Pixels To Pixies in Marshall McLuhan’s Gutenberg Galaxy’ looks fascinating. Good luck and welcome!” As I headed down the hall, I knew where I was going, and for better or worse, I wanted to go there! My first-ever desire for direction. It was magic. I lectured about the “Pixies” a 1960s all-women rock group whose “Goin’ it the Chapel of Love” critiques the commodification of love in post-printing press America. I got a standing ovation.

The real Professor Wandering never showed up. I hope he’s dead. At any rate, my wandering days ended at “Mr. Jones University. I lectured, I published, I served, I’m tenured. I keep my roadmap and walking shoes as reminders of my past and my sojourn at “Mind Passages.” Every once-in-awhile, just to stay in practice, I share my itinerary with my Secretary when I’m going to the library. She humors me and laughingly asks if I need a cab or a map.

Heading to the library, I see a slightly aged Potatochontas sitting in a flour sack dress on a bench in the hall. I am shocked, but filled with joy. There’s a toddler sitting next to her dressed in a flour sack too. Potatochontas smiles. We embrace. I look over my shoulder and the little girl says “Hi. You are my daddy. My name is Rose. Mommy loves you very much.”

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

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Tagged elocutio, figures of speech, rhetoric, trope

Metaphor

Posted on July 13, 2023 | Leave a comment

Metaphor (met’-a-phor): A comparison made by referring to one thing as another.

“I am an unpaved driveway. Think about it. Mull it over. Forget about it. It’s a heavy metaphor. Dirt. Gravel. Ruts. A weed strip down the middle.” That’s it! Miss Mantandino will love it. She might even read it to the class. I—Billy Widdle—was in love with her and wanted to marry her after we finished the school year—maybe in July. It didn’t matter that she was fifteen years older than me. I was going to do it. She came to my desk to pick the metaphor. She read it, and without a word, put it back on my desk. She made her way back up to her desk and said: “Attention boys and girls. Attention!” The room quieted down and she said”Billy Widdle has written something for today’s metaphor assignment that he will read aloud. Billy, go ahead.” I read it and there was silence when I finished it. James Klogar was the first to speak: “It is more stupid than what Billy usually writes.” Then Suzy Schmid chimed in: “It is a striking portrait of Billy’s self concept. He should be escorted to the school nurse for counseling.” Then Bella Schazoul was called on: “I agree with Suzy, but I would add, clearly he is dangerous. We should call Public Safety and get him out of here before he goes berserk and hurts us.” Miss Mantandino had pulled a small automatic pistol out of her desk and pointed it at me:

“Don’t be afraid Billy. Just don’t make any fast moves. I’ve been trained in classroom firearm utilization by the school district’s ‘Bureau of Bombs, Guns, Gases, Chalk’ in a one-day workshop in a very nice hotel with a jacuzzi and swimming pool.” I did not know what to do. I never imagined the metaphor would take me down this road. I couldn’t tell anybody, but my big sister had written the metaphor for her senior class. I had found it squished between the cushions of our couch. I had copied it and used it.

I started singing a song I had composed. It was a version of “Old MacDonald’s Farm” where he has exotic animals and two wives. His Wife #1 is mauled by a Raccoon, catches rabies, and dies. I was on my final “eee-yi-eee-yi-oh” when Public Safety showed up. They knocked down the classroom door. There were ten of them dressed in military gear with automatic weapons. They yelled at Miss Mantandino, “Where’s Widdle?” She said, “I’m aiming my pistol at him.” They handcuffed me and led me to the Principal’s Office for questioning. The officer slammed my sister’s metaphor down on the desk. “What’s this crap?” He asked. I told him my big sister had written it and I had stolen it and passed it off as mine.” “Oh,” he said “We’re going have to hunt down your sister. Where is she?” I told them she was working on a coffee plantation in Brazil. He said “Ok. You may go back to class now. Please thank Miss Mantandino for her service and vigilance. Just remind her to keep her pistol under lock and key.”

I went back to class. It was nearly 3.00 PM. My fellow students cowered behind their desks when I walked in unescorted. Miss Mantandino stood there—if she had her arms amputated, she would be Venus’s identical twin. I figured the time was right to ask Miss Mantandino to marry me. I raised my hand . . .

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

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Posted in metaphor

Tagged elocutio, figures of speech, rhetoric, trope

Metaplasm

Posted on July 12, 2023 | Leave a comment

Metaplasm (met’-a-plazm): A general term for orthographical figures (changes to the spelling of words). This includes alteration of the letters or syllables in single words, including additions, omissions, inversions, and substitutions. Such changes are considered conscious choices made by the artist or orator for the sake of eloquence or meter, in contrast to the same kinds of changes done accidentally and discussed by grammarians as vices (see barbarism). See: antisthecon, aphaeresis, apocope, epenthesis, paragoge, synaloepha.

I told my mother “I paahked my caaa in owuh naibuh’s yahd,” I thought I was pretty funny imitating my great-great-grandfather’s Maine accent. He had been a sailor all his life. His nickname was “Yardarm” and he had actually served on clipper ships. He was 112 and had been forced to move in with us after the “incidents” at the nursing home. He had been accused of “snacking out of order” and running over peoples’ toes with his wheelchair. The snacking thing was ridiculous. Snack time was 2.00 pm every day. Everybody got one apple, sliced, on a plate. My great-great grandfather would sneak into the kitchen and steal an apple at 1.00 pm, and eat it in front of everybody in the day room before the designated snack time. I asked him about the whole thing and he told me “Those bahstads! Make’em wawkh the plank!”

I thought, what the hell is wrong with eating an apple when you want to? I went to Red Crest to find out. I asked Yardarm’s caregiver, Nurse Cakes, and she said “protocols” and took off her nurse hat, and looked me up and down. She said, “He was the roughest customer I ever had. I wanted to push him down the stairs. But, I didn’t. It’s illegal.” She gave me a flirtatious look. It was temping, but she looked like a human moose, and I had a girlfriend. Also, I thought she was crazy.

I ran to the VP’s office with the nurse walking quickly after me. When I got there, I slammed the door in her face. She pounded on the VP’s door and yelled “Come on! I can take care of you! I won’t hit you with my shoe or push you down the stairs.” More craziness. The VP told me to ignore Nurse Cakes. She helped make a lot of people happy at Red Crest Home—mostly younger staff who appreciate her hands-on approach to their welfare.

I had to leave Red Crest before I went crazy. Nurse Cakes was over the rainbow and I was beginning to believe the VP wasn’t too far behind. Before I left, I asked him about Yardarm’s wheelchair incidents. He told me that without cause, by surprise, and with malice and forethought, my great-great grandfather had rolled over a few people’s toes, chipping their toenail polish, and generally damaging their expensive pedicures, causing waves of sorrow throughout Red Crest. I was really angry, I asked him, “Is that all?” Due to “protocols,” I knew I couldn’t do anything. So, I yelled as I went out the door and headed home: “You crazy ass losers! You’ll be hearing from my lawyer!” I didn’t have lawyer. I don’t have a lawyer. I’ll never have a lawyer, unless I win the lotto. But, it was still a good thing to yell it. People do it in movies all the time.

When I got home, I saw Yardarm sitting at the kitchen table working on something made of wood. I asked him if he wanted some grog and he said “shoowuh.” I brought the mug to the table and he gulped half of it down. I asked him what he was making. He said “Lobstah buoy.” I asked him if he was going to make it into a lamp. He said “Naw.” That was it. End of conversation.

Great-great grandfather left that night without letting us know. The next day’s headlines told us where great-great grandfather had gone—Red Crest. Nurse Cakes had been seriously injured by an intruder. There was a freshly painted bloody wooden lobster buoy found at the scene where Nurse Cakes had been assaulted. The lobster buoy was brown and yellow, the colors of my home which I had just finished painting. I kept the unused paint stored in the garage. Clearly, the buoy found at Red Crest was the one Yardarm had been working on in my kitchen.

POSTSCRIPT

Great-great grandfather called us that night from Canada. He had dual citizenship from his sailor days. He had checked into a “much niceuh” facility, Maple Grove, using his Canadian passport. “It reminds me of a hotel I stayed in in Baahbahdos when I was in the rum and sugah trade.” Great-great grandfather’s life is a saga. Now, he’s living as a fugitive at Maple Grove, learning the Canadian accent so he can blend in.

By the way, Red Crest went out of business. Soon after the Nurse Cakes incident, the VP was arrested for replacing resident’s jewelry gemstones with Swarovski crystals.

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

Metastasis

Posted on July 11, 2023 | Leave a comment

Metastasis (me-tas’-ta-sis): Denying and turning back on your adversaries arguments used against you.

“You’re no damn good.” That’s all my father said to me whenever the family went to visit him in prison. I would tell him, “No. You’ve got it wrong. You’re no damn good. You killed Mr. Grant with a bow and arrow. It was horrendous. He lay there face down, soaking his lawn with blood while you did a jig. And why did you shoot him with your bow and arrow? You found out he was a METS fan! He was wearing his METS hat and was on his way to a game with his son Tommy, who saw the whole thing and went crazy at the age of nine, vowing to get you. God Dad, you are a colossal loser. You are no damn good!” After my diatribe, Dad gave me the double finger, lit another cigarette, and continued talking to Mom and bouncing my little sister Grace on his knee.

Oh well, Dad was a burden I was doomed to bear. Mom still believed him: that he killed Mr. Grant in self-defense. He claimed that Mr. Grant had “drilled” into his soul and made him want to jump in front of car and kill himself. He was feeling an uncontrollable urge to close his eyes and run into the street—the dead-end street where we lived—when he noticed he was holding the bow and arrow, he felt that “the time had come” to defend himself by shooting Mr. Grant. His cockamamy defense was laughable. There were people snickering in the jury when he told his story, which was totally debunked by Mrs. Grant’s testimony—which was the truth—how Dad suffered from METS-a-phobia and harassed Mr. Grant on numerous occasions before he murdered him.

Dad’s first trial was a mistrial. Dad is very, very attractive. One of the female jurors fell madly in love with him. She bribed a guard to deliver love letters and tasteless pictures to Dad. She was caught when Dad taped the pictures to the walls of his cell. She was recognized as a juror by an honest guard, and that was that for trial #1. Now, the juror lady regularly visits Dad for conjugal visits. Mom thinks ‘conjugal’ has something to do with grammar. Dad told her that the woman is a tutor supplied by the sate for his rehabilitation. Improving his grammar will help him get a job if he ever gets out of prison. He is up for probation in 10 years.

Mrs. Grant has remarried. Her new husband, “Warpy” Grant, is the murdered Mr. Grant’s identical twin. The first time I saw him out in the yard I nearly fainted. Although he is his identical twin, Warpy is way different from the dead Mr. Grant. For example, he struts around his backyard in boxer shorts and no shirt. Mom has bought a pair of cheap binoculars for “birdwatching.” But, there’s no doubt they are for “Warpy watching.” Yesterday, Warpy came to our house to fix the kitchen wall clock. Somebody had removed the batteries and Warpy was going to replace them. Mom gave me $5.00 to take my sister to Dairy Queen. She told us to take our time and take the long way home through the park.

We had our favorites—Buster Bars—and we headed home. We didn’t listen to Mom, and took the shortcut through the school playground. We got home and heard Mom crying in the kitchen. Warpy was laying on the floor. He was wearing his boxer shorts and had a double-A battery in each hand. My little sister screamed and ran and hid in her bedroom. I called 911. An ambulance arrived in five minutes. Mrs. Grant was crying on her front lawn. She pointed at Mom and yelled “Tou killed him you whore!” Actually, he had died from a heart attack, but his wife couldn’t let go of the idea that Mom had murdered him.

One night, Mrs. Grant broke into our house with a bow and arrow to get revenge against my mother. I was in the kitchen getting a late drink of orange juice. When she heard us talking, mom came into the kitchen to see what was going on. Mrs. Grant aimed the bow and arrow at her, and pulled back the bow string. My mother laughed. The bow and arrow was a child’s toy. The arrow had a suction cub tip. It was harmless. Mrs. Grant apologized and went home.

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

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Posted in metastasis

Tagged elocutio, figures of speech, rhetoric, trope

Metonymy

Posted on July 10, 2023 | Leave a comment

Metonymy (me-ton’-y-my): Reference to something or someone by naming one of its attributes. [This may include effects or any of the four Aristotelian causes {efficient/maker/inventor, material, formal/shape, final/purpose}.]

“Pipe Cleaner” was a friend of mine when I was a kid. He made amazing things out of pipe cleaners, so I called him “Pipe Cleaner.” It all started in the second grade, when, after carving swans out of bars of soap, we moved on to pipe cleaners. Miss Moodie told us that twisting cotton-covered wire built character, the same reason for carving soap bars into swans.

Our first project was to make a pony. I watched Miss Moodie make one, and tried to imitate hers. My pony only had three legs and no tail. William’s (aka Pipe Cleaner’s) was beautiful. He had taken 25 packs of pipe cleaners to make a two-foot tall pony with a mane and tail that looked like it was blowing in wind behind the galloping horse. He named the horse “Cheeto.” All the kids went crazy. Miss Moody slumped down behind her desk and fanned herself. She said, “Nap time boys and girls.” We got out our rugs and laid down—too excited by William’s accomplishment to sleep. We just lay there on our backs, with our eyes closed imagining William’s galloping horse. I could hear hoofbeats in our little classroom. It was weird.

The next day Miss Moodie gave us an “advanced pipe cleaner project.” we were all excited and hoped that William would make something amazing again. We were instructed to make whatever we wanted. I made a coaster. It was round and flat. It looked like a hairy pancake. Nobody liked it. William had outdone himself—he had made a Miss Moodie doll. It was unmistakably Miss Moodie, down to the teacher-bun hairdo and weird lace-up shoes with heels like sawed-off broomsticks. We all just stood there and looked at the pipe-cleaner Miss Moodie. William Said, “Watch this” and tickled pipe-cleaner Miss Moody under her arm with a single pipe cleaner. Miss Moodie giggled and told William to “Stop it! Right now!” We all stood there with our mouths hanging open while William kept on tickling Miss Moodie. She was out of breath from giggling and looked like she was going to be sick.

I wrestled William to the floor, and I let him up, and he handcuffed me with pipe cleaner handcuffs. Clearly, William had gone around the bend, but his pipe cleaner feats were sheer genius. He tickled Miss Moodie one more time and ran out the door, stealing the remaining pipe-cleaners from our classroom.

Miss Moodie recovered and stood up behind her desk. She said, “Boys and girls, what you witnessed here today was strange but true. William made what is called in Florida or Granada or someplace like that a “Voodoo Doll.” It is dangerous. You all saw what happened to me. I lost control and giggled. I was embarrassed. William’s family come from Haiti and may not know the ins and outs of being American. I will call them tonight.”

The next day Miss Moodie came to class wearing giant earrings, a beautiful blue dress with ruffles around the shoulders and what looked like a red turban, sandals, and a small bag of something hanging around her neck. She said “bon matin” when she entered the classroom. Her eyes were a little glazed, but beside that, and her beautiful clothes, she looked normal. She told us she was going to be roommates with William’s family and she was going to learn the cultural “activities” of walking on burning embers and “sniffing out Zombies.” Two weeks later, she was gone. William wouldn’t say anything about it and our new teacher was not much older than us. She was stern, but William took care of that with a pipe-cleaner “Loosen Up” amulet that he gave her as a welcome gift.

As time went by, I realized that William was gifted. What he could do with pipe cleaners was magic. As our friendship endured over the years, he became better and better at creating pipe cleaner manifestations. He said the voodoo thing was low-budget and he was still ashamed with what he had done to Miss Moodie. He had stopped practicing voodoo—no more tickling or raising the dead, or anything like that.

He put some kind of spell on his pipe-cleaner creations so the pipe cleaners blended so well with the objects they manifest they were undetectable. William made an 11-room mansion out of pipe cleaners and gave it to his parents. He made me a VW bug for my high school graduation. Finally, he made “iron” lungs for kids who had contracted polio. William was truly amazing. I asked him on day: “Whatever happened to Miss Moodie?” He told me simply: “She walks the night.”

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

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Tagged elocutio, figures of speech, rhetoric, trope

Ominatio

Posted on July 9, 2023 | Leave a comment

Ominatio (o-mi-na’-ti-o): A prophecy of evil.

After I graduated from Minor University with an MFA in Creative Writing, I went searching for a job as a writer. The university is located in Arkansas and takes great pride in its distinguished alumni. For example, there was Nostrom McOgle who held the world record for riding on a flat tire. Anyway, I was lucky to get a job in a Chinese fortune cookie factory, WonTan Food Groups Ltd. My job was to write fortunes “addressing peoples’ hopes and fears.”

I had a desk and a computer. The screen displayed a template with 20 fortunes per page. I typed in my fortunes and sent them off to the “proofer” who accepted them for printing, or rejected them. I thought my first sheet was pretty good. For example, “Your house won’t burn down,” “Keep drinking,” “ Your pet may run away,” “You might have cancer.” “Something bad might happen to you.” I thought of my fortunes as “adventures in realism.” I was a fan of Earnest Hemingway. The compact prose he was noted for was perfect for fortune cookies. The blunt and vivid pronouncements exemplify brevity’s “soul of wit.” I was loving it.

Then, the Manager, Ms. Lee, visited my desk one day. She said, “Are you trying to put WonTan out of business? Your fortunes are pathways to misery. Who wants to end a meal with the possibility of having cancer? If you can’t get more upbeat, you’re fired. Do you understand?” I could barely say “Yes.” She was so beautiful and so charming, and so nice that I developed a huge crush while she admonished me. Later that afternoon, she called and asked if I wanted to take a tour of the factory to get better oriented. “Of course!” I instantly replied. I decided I would write “love fortunes” and email them to her. The first one was “Our souls have met. What’s next?” I emailed it to her before our tour.

The tour was fantastic. The machines that insert the fortunes into the cookies are amazing. Such delicate work for a machine. After the tour was over and we had removed our hard hats, Ms. Lee pulled a sheet of paper from her blouse. She handed it to me. It was warm from being in her blouse. “Read it,” she said. It said “You’re fired.” “Why did you take me on this tour? What the hell is going on?” I was nearly crying. “”Your ‘two souls meeting’ did it. I wanted to take you on a tour anyway, so you could hate yourself all the more when I fired you.

Now I was mad! I went back to my desk and threw my computer on the floor. It popped a couple of times and died—just like me; heartbroken without a chance. Ms. Lee was out of my league. So, now I have a new job working for Smut Brothers, the world’s most prolific producers of pornography. I write the movie synopses that appear on CD-dust jackets or on-screen. I enjoy the work, although I do get tired of the repetition of what the actors do. I often think of Ms. Lee and the total failure I was at winning her affections. Then, a new movie titled “Hong Kong Time-bomb” came across my desk one morning. Ms. Lee was the star. Her screen name was Feng Banana and she ran a company in Hong Kong that made crotchless garments. It was called “Flash Pants.” Her role was to randomly “test” the product, which was the central theme of the movie.

I couldn’t believe it. Now, I was really heartbroken. But, I wanted her more than ever. I took a cab to the fortune cookies factory. I had a big sign that said “I know what you do in your spare time Feng Banana.” I stood outside the factory hoping she would see me. She came outside and said to me “If you do not leave me alone, I will have you gruesomely murdered. Do you understand me?” “Yes,” I said. But actually, I did not understand. I remembered something from my MFA program at Minor University: “Don’t criticize what you don’t understand.” I was too young to be murdered. I went back to Smut Brothers and sat down at my desk. I booted up “Hong Kong Time-Bomb” and pressed play.

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

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Posted in ominatio

Tagged elocutio, figures of speech, rhetoric, trope

Onedismus

Posted on July 8, 2023 | Leave a comment

Onedismus (on-e-dis’-mus): Reproaching someone for being impious or ungrateful.

“I do more for you than God, and all you do is complain. You’ve been wearing those pajamas for two weeks—they smell like a kitty litter box that needs cleaning. You’re not sick. You’re not injured. Why the hell don’t you put on some clothes and go look for a job?” “You’re no role model either,” I yelled. Her bathrobe looked like a feed lot for monkeys—there were ants crawling down one of the sleeves and cigarette burns on the lapels. Her hair looked like tossed pasta. But God—her figure was to die for. When she opened her robe I went berserk, lunging across the kitchen floor like a raging buck. She smelled like cigarettes, feta cheese, and her kisses tasted like Maalox. She pushed me away and said “Get a job and you’ll get what you want.” Finally, she offered an incentive that would get me out the door.

I took a quick shower and put on some clothes that were way too tight due to my stay-at-home sabbatical—no exercise, eating and drinking too much. I combed my hair and headed down the street to CVS to get a newspaper. I got home and sat at the kitchen table perusing the want ads. I had a Master’s degree in “General Studies,” from an on-line university in Australia. I was ready for anything “in general.”

I couldn’t believe it! There was an ad that read, “Wanted. Man or Woman prepared to do anything in general. Call: 800-231-5673. Mention this ad and ask for Abaddon Acheron.” I immediately called the number. Abaddon himself answered the phone. He asked me if I had a conscience. I told him “not much.” “Good. Perfect” he answered. “You’re hired. Starting salary is $200,000 per year, with benefits, including a 401K pension plan. One of my minions will pick you up at home tomorrow morning at 9:00 sharp. Don’t worry, we know where you live.” When he said a “minion” would pick me up, I got little nervous. But what the hell. Even though she wouldn’t take her bathrobe off, I had a great time with my wife that night. I had a job even if I didn’t know what it was.

The minion picked me up right on time. He looked normal, except one of his sideburns was missing. I figured it was some kind of fashion statement. We settled into the limo and took off. We pulled up at a landfill and drove into a tunnel in the side of a mountain of trash. There were armed guards all along the tunnel. We stopped in front of an elevator door, got out, and the minion pressed the button marked zero. When we got to zero, we were met by Abaddon. He kept going in and out of focus as we made our way to his office. He said, “if you’ve done your research you know that our company, “Infinite Misfortune” specializes in the manufacture of woe. Your position is that of Pet Killer. Your job is to eliminate peoples’ beloved pets by running them over, poisoning them, and even shooting them. You will be a major nexus of woe, second only to our corps of killers who put an end to peoples’ lives, causing the worst woe possible. I thought, “So, this is what a master’s in General Studies got me. Pet killer.”

I was immediately sent out on assignment—a three-person family who had just gotten their little boy a puppy. I was posing as a representative of Purina Puppy Chow. The family had “won” a bag of puppy chow. it had been poisoned by a technician back at Ft. Landfill.

The family was delighted. I wanted to throw up. I couldn’t do it. I grabbed the bag of puppy chow and took off rinning. I dumped out the puppy chow and kept running. I looked back and there was a woman with three Chihuahuas on leashes. They had started eating the poisoned dog food off the sidewalk.. “Too late for them,” I thought as I started crying. Abaddon popped out of a sewer grate and yelled “You’re fired!”

When I got home I called the police. They told me to “shut up” and leave them alone. So I did. To keep my wife happy and willing I got another job: school crossing guard. Every time a kid got run over on my watch, I thought of “Infinite Misfortune” and the great pension plan I could’ve had.

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

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Posted in onedismus, Uncategorized

Tagged elocutio, figures of speech, rhetoric, trope

Onomatopoeia

Posted on July 7, 2023 | Leave a comment

Onomatopoeia (on-o-mat-o-pee’-a): Using or inventing a word whose sound imitates that which it names (the union of phonetics and semantics).

My heart went “boom” and I collapsed on the floor. Clearly, this was the end. After a lifetime of eating fatty foods—especially ice cream, and, although technically not eating, downing a half liter of JohnnyWalker Black every day, not to mention smoking 2 packs of Marlboro 27’s per day. Eating, drinking, smoking, and now, being put on a stretcher and zoomed off to the hospital that was named after me: “Chuckles Memorial Hospital.” I was the world’s wealthiest clown. I had made billions acting like a stupid shit. I said stupid things. I did stupid things.

It all happened on my show “Mr. Chuckles Neighborhood.” It was modeled after the neighborhood I grew up in. I had to modify it significantly to make it suitable for kids. For example, Bus Stop Betty was a prostitute in my real neighborhood. In “Mr. Chuckles Neighborhood” she is Dr. Smith, a college English professor waiting for her bus to school. Then, there was “Fruit Stand Fredo” who ran a mafia-owned fruit stand where, in addition to fruit, he sold pot, Ecstasy, and LSD. He was also a loan shark who had half the neighborhood in his debt. Now, in “Mr. Chuckles Neighborhood,” he’s “Mr. Peachy.” He wears a white apron and sells only fruit, sometimes giving it away to homeless people. As you can see, “Mr. Chuckles Neighborhood” is pretty straight-laced.

“Jesus Christ—when’re we gonna get to the hospital?” A voice said “We got here 15 minutes ago. You’re dead. You’re laid out on a slab in the morgue. I wasn’t buying it—I could talk, I could hear voices, I could see, the only thing I couldn’t do was move. My wife walked in to the morgue to identify me: “Yup, that’s fat ass Chuckles. Goodbye shit-for-brains. Have fun in Manatee heaven.” I was devastated—I yelled at her but she couldn’t hear me. I needed a drink, but the voice refused. I was getting cold and asked for a blanket. “Nope,” the voiced responded. It also told me not worry, that I’d be checking out sometime before noon and heading to my next “destination.”

But holy shit! I felt an electric shock and I sat up, I was alive! I couldn’t resist doing a heart attack joke:

“A priest has a heart attack and is rushed to hospital. When he wakes up, he is being raced through the corridors on a gurney. Disoriented, he asks, “am I in heaven?” “No, replies the nurse. “We’re just taking a shortcut through the children’s ward.”

Nobody laughed. The joke couldn’t have been that bad, I thought. Priest jokes are usually good for a laugh. Then it dawned on me: I might be in hell—a place where nobody thought I was funny. So, I tried another joke: “Why can’t you hear a pterodactyl going to the bathroom? Because the “P” is silent.” The kid in scrubs in the corner holding an empty jar labeled “Comic’s Brain” gave a short giggle that sounded almost like a cough. Nobody else laughed—they all glared at him and he cowered. Now I could see what was going on. I had unexpectedly come back to life, and they wanted my brain for science. Now, they were going to kill me. I swore, if I ever got off the gurney, I would kill them!

I was free of my restraints when I woke up in a sunny hospital room with a view of the park outside. There was a tumbler of scotch and a double-cheeseburger on my bed tray. I was alone. I was getting to the point where I wanted my death to resolve itself. “Am I dead or alive?” I asked my empty room. “He’s alive!” my wife yelled as she walked through the door. “Finally!” I yelled, full of joy. “Duke and I are here to get you out of this mess,” said my wife. Duke stepped through the door. It was the kid who had been holding the “Comic’s Brain” jar in the morgue. I noticed my wife had a cute little chrome-plated .25 auto in her hand. She started blabbering at me and hurling obscenities. Suddenly, three police officers burst into the room, guns drawn. One of them handcuffed Duke and the other one shot my wife and put her down forever—she tried to shoot him, but her gun had misfired. Too bad.

I didn’t press charges against Duke. He works for me now as Dick Doormat on “Mr. Chuckles Neighborhood.” Before guests are allowed into my Joke Shop, they’re required to wipe their feet on him.

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

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Tagged figures of speech, rhetoric, trope

Orcos

Posted on July 5, 2023 | Leave a comment

Orcos (or’-kos): Swearing that a statement is true.

I always wondered what the connection might be between swearing something is true, and just plain swearing, as in “dammit.” How about a double swear: “I swear it’s true, dammit.!” But, like all things we say, we’ve got to be careful who we say it to. For example, my mother accused me of stealing my sister’s Mickey Mouse pencil. I responded “I swear I didn’t steal it, dammit.”

I had just learned how swear, so I wasn’t sure when and where to deploy it. I had learned how to swear at my friend Bruce’s house. He was rich and lived at the top of the hill. When we played there, his parents let us swear all we wanted. We sweared about everything: at lunch “Pass the fu*kin salt” or “Let’s watch some shit on TV” or “Where the hell’s the bathroom?” The only downside was Bruce’s sister. She kept trying to get me to come up to her room to see her horse pictures. The first time she asked I complied. We sat on her bed and looked at her pictures. When we were done, she got down on her hands and knees and made me ride her around her bedroom. She made a horse noise and reared up on her “hind” legs. I fell off and ran downstairs.

I found Bruce in the kitchen holding a steak knife. He was licking his lips and rocking the blade back and forth, making it flash under the kitchen lights. There was an open bottle of whiskey on the counter next to where he was standing. There were also two empty glasses sitting there. He said, “Let’s have a shot, or two, or three.” We were only 12 and I had never had alcohol. Then his sister came into the kitchen and slammed down tree shots in quick succession. She said, “My name is July and I’m an alcoholic.” She was 18, so I guessed it was legal for her to drink. But an alcoholic? Wow, she hadn’t wasted any time. She wanted to play horses agin, but I said “No.” She threw a box of Cheerios at me and stalked outside to the garden. She lit a hand-rolled cigarette and stared singing the Neil Diamond song about cracking roses.

I took a shot of whiskey and gulped it down. The world seemed to be a better place, so I drank another shot. I think I was a little drunk. So, I said “I’m goin’ the fu*k home.” Bruce said, “I don’t give a fu*k, go ahead.” I was glad to get out of there and back to my normal family—mom and dad, my older sister Molly and my baby brother, Nestor.

Getting back to the missing Mickey Mouse pencil episode:

For weeks, I had been taking the pencil and hiding it around the house and “helping” my sister find it. For me, it was a game, for my sister it was a total pain in the ass. At some point she told mom about the pencil game, saying I stole her pencil. That’s when my mother interrogated me and I gave the solemn oath including a swear word. My mother went crazy: “Not only are you lying, but you’re swearing too! I’m telling your father.” “Oh shit,” I thought, My father’s a gun nut and he’s been drawing his gun in the living room and aiming it at Nestor’s bassinet, yelling “Come out with yours hands up you little piggy!” Then, he would throw Nestor’s velour fuzzy rabbit at the bassinet.

My mom told my dad I was a liar and a swearer. He said, “Don’t worry I’ll get that little piggy! We’ll be eatin’ him for dinner tonight.” At that point my mom realized that dad had landed in cloud cuckoo land. Mom called 911 and they came and took dad away after he shot up the TV. After he’d been hauled off, I said to mom: “That was fu*ckin’ brilliant calling 911. You saved our lives.” Mom said, “Fu*kin’ A. He was out of his goddam mind.”

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

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Posted in orcos

Tagged example, figures of speech, rhetoric, trope

Paenismus

Posted on July 3, 2023 | Leave a comment

Paenismus (pai-nis’-mus): Expressing joy for blessings obtained or an evil avoided.

I was in the 7th grade and there was a girl following me around. She would hide behind a tree along the sidewalk and say “Hi Johnny” from behind the tree when I walked by. She would crawl under my front porch and say “Hi Johnny” from under the porch when I got home. One night she was under my bed! I told my parents and her parents came and picked her up and took her home.

I got my driver’s license immediately after I turned 17. The open road beckoned. I got permission from my parents to drive to Delaware Water Gap, about 100 miles from where I lived in New Jersey. I was halfway there when I heard “Hi Johnny” from the back seat. It was like she was some kind of evil spirit haunting the car. She said, “You kidnapped me and I am going to tell my parents.” I pulled over to the side of the road. I was going to kick her out of the car and let her fend for herself. She started crying when I told her to get out of the car. I folded. “We might as well go see Delaware Water Gap and then drive back home.”

We pulled into a roadside rest by the Delaware River. It had a pay phone and she called her parents so they wouldn’t worry. Then, I heard her say, “He kidnapped me Mommy and wants $300 ransom left in a paper bag outside Charlie’s Soda Fountain. Don’t call the police.” I tried to call her parents to tell them she was full of shit, but she wouldn’t give me her phone number. Any story I might have to share with the police would be laughed at, and I might be shot. I didn’t know what to do. I felt like I had gone crazy. She said, “I love you Johnny. We can run away together.” God! That’s all I needed to hear—run away together. I snapped and told her to lay down on the back seat while I drove us home. She complied.

We got back to our little town and pulled up in front of Charlie’s Soda Fountain. There was a small brown bag on the sidewalk. I hopped out of the car and picked up, expecting to be arrested, but I wasn’t! I looked in the bag and there were three $100 bills inside. I didn’t know what to do. I drove the girl home, gave her the bag of money and told her to give it back to her mother. I rang the doorbell and her mother answered: “Hi Johnny,” she said “my daughter’s mentally disturbed and so am I. We do nutty things for laughs. Keep the money—I think we got our money’s worth.” That did it!

I ran to the car to get a tire iron to beat the two of them into oblivion. I got halfway there and calmed down, I went back to the house and told them if they didn’t give me $5,000 cash, I would have them arrested. The mother gave me the money the next day and I took off with her daughter. She was waiting in the car. She said “Hi Johnny” and I told her to get into the front seat. I got her the medication she needed and we got married in Idaho. Everything worked out beautifully.

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

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Tagged example, figures of speech, rhetoric, trope

Palilogia

Posted on July 2, 2023 | Leave a comment

Palilogia: Repetition of the same word, with none between, for vehemence. Synonym for epizeuxis.

“Ho, Ho, Ho, Ho, Ho, Ho” Santa had gone mad. Usually he limited his “Ho ho’s” to three per session,. The kids in line were getting restless. Santa was sitting in his throne and he couldn’t stop going ho ho. He was up to 45 Ho ho’s and was sweating and out of breath. He looked terrible. We called 911. As the EMT people took Santa away, the kids who had stood waiting for a half-hour to reveal their Christmas wishes, became uncontrollable and went berserk.

They looted the baskets of candy canes, smashed Christmas tree ornaments on the floor, tipped over the fake reindeer, tore open the fake presents. Then Billy Whaley, whose nickname was Zippo, who loved playing with matches, piled crumpled paper from the torn up presents in the middle of the floor. He said “Bye bye bullshit Santa’s workshop” and pulled out a pack of stick matches, lit one, and threw it on the paper. Everybody made it out the door. The kids watched the smoke, and then the flames coming through the roof. Billy was yelling “Oh baby, oh baby. Do it for me baby.”

By the time the firemen got there, Santa’s Workshop was a pile of smoking charred embers. Shoving what looked like a poker hand back into his boot, one of the firemen said, “I had a goddamn Full House. What am I supposed to do? Fold? Santa’s Workshop is fake anyway, just like Santa and all the rest of the shit with Christmas. You’ve lost the Christmas spirit boys and girls—peace on earth, goodwill toward men.” One of the kids yelled “How are we going to get what we actually want for Christmas; piles of presents, and some money too? Why don’t you go back to the firehouse and resume your poker game, you big fat hypocrite. Kiss my ass.”

The firemen left and the kids and their parents left. The sun was setting and Santa’s Workshop was just a pile of charred wood with remnants of red paint here and there. Santa got out of the hospital and was dropped off by a cab in front of the rubble. His fake beard had been pulled off at some point. He noticed Rudolph the red-nosed reindeer laying on his back with his front legs burned off. Santa started to cry. Immediately his chronic persistent “Ho Ho–ing” stopped, but he couldn’t go “Ho-Ho” anymore. His psychologist told him he couldn’t “Ho-Ho” due to the traumatic experiences he had with “Ho-Ho,” the core of his his being’s signature. Now, in order to “Ho-Ho” again, the psychologist told him he had to build positive associations with “Ho.” The psychologist said, “Prostitutes are frequently called Ho’s.” When you say “Ho” think of an attractive and willing prostitute.” Santa did just that, and was cured. He got his “Ho ho’s” back and went on to serve as a Santa Surrogate for five more fruitful years. He also came to enjoy the company of Ho’s and frequented their lodgings during the holiday seasons, where they watched “The Bob Newhart Show” reruns on Tv and laughed together at the jokes. Out of respect for the ho’s, Santa laughed “ha, ha, ha.”

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.

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Tagged elocutio, figures of speech, rhetoric, trope

Paragoge

Posted on June 30, 2023 | Leave a comment

Paragoge (par-a-go’-ge): The addition of a letter or syllable to the end of a word. A kind of metaplasm.

“Hi Ho Johnny-o“ said the jester to the king. “How many fruit flys will you kill before you go to sleep?” Things weren’t going well. I was trying to write a children’s story, but violence, bloodshed and death kept creeping in. I don’t know if fruit flies have blood, but they produce some kind of juice when you squish their irritating little bodies. Anyway, squishing kills fruit flies.

The story I’m working on is about a court jester who gets “The King is a Joke” tattooed on his butt after a night of drinking. One of his best tricks was “show Butt” where he sang a song about sitting in church that ended with him pulling down his pants. It was the king’s favorite. The king demanded the “pants down” song every day. Since he got the stupid tattoo the jester was in big trouble—he couldn’t show his butt and it’s message to the king—he would be executed, probably flayed by the king’s son Prince Plato, whose name far outstripped his capabilities. After three days of giving excuses, he had run out. His most recent excuse came close to failing: “Princess Hooters pushed me down the wine cellar stairs.” Princess Hooters believed anything He told her, so he told her she pushed him down the stairs. She asked him if he had gotten hurt. It worked (for now).

THE REST OF THE STORY:

The Jester’s Tattooed Butt

I had to go see Mollgrad the Excuse Broker. I scraped together my meager resources and headed to Mollgrad’s hovel. As a Jester, I didn’t have much to offer. I had three spare bells, a worn-out Punch and Judy set, and juggling balls painted to look like testicles. The Broker took my offerings without question. He left the room and same right back. He had a tin of pine tar and a piece of pigskin. He told me: “Stick the pigskin over your tattoo with the pine tar. Next time you perform, tell the king you backed into a hot stove and burned your butt, and the pigskin poultice is helping you heal.”

The ruse worked for two weeks, then the king wanted to know when I would heal. I panicked and told him in a couple of days. I went back to the Broker. He was surprised that the king cared. “You must see Gregory the Cutler. He is a friend and will not charge you for his services.” Gregory was a stout man—he was strong from grinding metals on his wheel. He told me to pull down my pants and press my butt’s tattoo agains the grinding wheel—to press as hard as I could. Gregory pushed on the wheel’s pedals making the wheel spin faster and faster while I p pressed tattoo against it.

It started to sting, and then it started to hurt. Gregory took a mouthful of rum and spit it on my butt. I started to moan. I started to cry. He went faster. I screamed with pain. He went faster. Then, suddenly he stopped. “It’s done,” he said. My jester pants were soaked with blood, and the the tattoo was erased! The cutler gave me some salve made from ground rabbit ears, hog fat drippings, and dandelions. I was to smear it on my butt twice a day, until my wound started to itch. Then, I was supposed to soak a rag in rum and press it on my wound to stop the itching.

I was saved—saved by lies and modern medicine.

COMMENTARY

As I read it again, I see it will not work as a children’s story. I should’ve realized that a story about a butt was unsuitable. However, as an adult-oriented story liberally seasoned with grown-up themes, I may get it published in “Cosmopolitan,” “Vanity Fair,” or maybe “Golf Digest” which has a really liberal idea of the relevance of golf to adult-themed short fiction.

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. Also available in Kindle

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Posted in paragoge

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

Paralipsis

Posted on June 29, 2023 | Leave a comment

Paralipsis (par-a-lip’-sis): Stating and drawing attention to something in the very act of pretending to pass it over (see also cataphasis). A kind of irony.

I saw something that was very disturbing. It was a Wooly Bully, so disturbing I can’’t talk about it. It had horns and a great big jaw. It looked like a Buffalo with some kind of genetically induced malady. There were two women I know who were there observing it—Hattie and Maddy—two girls I went to Lucky Strike High School with. They ran the school paper “Help!” It was almost totally gossip about teachers and teachers and students. Every once in awhile, they’d run an opinion piece. The last one I read was about gym uniforms. It was salacious, written luridly and explicitly about the uniforms’ crotches discomfort, and how the tops of the girls’ gym suits “chafed and flattened their soft cargo.” Then, there was the revelation that the mens coach’s brother supplied the ill-fitting gym suits at inflated prices. The op-ed created a sensation. The men’s and women’s coaches were publicly shamed—made to stand in front of assembly wearing the uniforms the students were made to wear. The men’s coach kept pulling on his gym pant’s crotch, unintentionally showing how uncomfortable they are. The students loved it, chanting “crotch, crotch, crotch.” Hattie and Maddy became celebrities, to the point of being interviewed by Erin Burnett, who was visibly envious of the girls’ op-ed/expose, asking them inane questions like their favorite colors, favorite food, pet peeves.

Clearly, Hattie and Maddy were born journalists. Hattie went to the Newhouse School of Communication at Syracuse University. Maddy went to Columbia University. Maddy’s senior project is a documentary titled “Is there Hope for Rope”? It tracks the decline of rope in Western culture, and its impact on binding, hanging and towing. She looks at the “invasion” of bungee chords, Velcro, duct tape, zip ties, and to a lesser extent, super glue. In the face of the onslaught, rope has fallen. It’s vestiges are still observable in shoelaces, kite string, macrame, lobster traps, etc.

Maddy’s senior project is a biography of Gutenberg, the inventor of the printing press. It follows his successes and failures. He had 7 wives and 18 children. He was the greatest bigamist of his time, keeping his wives in the milking barn where each was assigned a cow. He got his idea for the printing press in the barn, when he stepped in a cow flop. In his next step his boot “printed” a duplicate image of its sole in fresh cow manure. Gutenberg stepped in the cow flop three or four times, printing more images of his boot sole. His first printing press was two boards like a sandwich. One board was the base, the other had text carved in it and would be smeared with ink. The text board would be set atop a sheet of paper set on the base board. Next, Gutenberg’s morbidly obese brother Hans would sit on the inked text board. The pressure from his 300 pound body would make a print. It took Gutenberg a few year to perfect the press. And once he did, business took off. He first printed a series of “bawdy” stories about Lil, a shady lady. The stories had titles like “Lil Befriends the King,” “Lil Goes to Jail,” “Lil Meets the Devil.” Finally, Gutenberg was persuaded to print Bibles, which he thought was a bad idea, but the profits would be huge, so he did it.

Both of these senior projects are admirable. Hattie and Maddy deserve to be the joint anchors that they are on MSNBC. My understanding is they’re going to do an expose of the Wooly Bully’s employment by the Republican Party to scare people away from the polls on Election Day. He is ugly and menacing looking, but I’ve heard he’s really nice with interests in gardening, origami, and knitting.

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.

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Paraprosdokian

Posted on June 27, 2023 | Leave a comment

Paraprosdokian: A figure of speech in which the latter part of a sentence or phrase [or series = anticlimax] is surprising or unexpected in a way that causes the reader or listener to reframe the first part. . . . For this reason, it is extremely popular among comedians and satirists. An especially clever paraprosdokian not only changes the meaning of an early phrase, but also plays on the double meaning of a particular word.(1)

“I love you more than dirty socks.” The first time my girlfriend Gabby said this to me I got really really angry. Who the hell does not “love” anything more than dirty socks? I could love a duck or a mosquito bite more than dirty socks. But, I trusted Gabby, so I thought there might be a back story, that, once told would help me understand the connection between dirty socks and love. In the meantime I made a couple of “I love you more than” phrases, trying to catch the weirdness of Gabby’s. My first was “I love you more than a cockroach’s ass.” I said it to Gabby and she jumped on my lap and started kissing me. It was insane, but I enjoyed it. The next day I tried out: “I love you more than weed killer.” I got a reprise of the jumping in the lap and the kissing, with the addition of a 3-course meal for dinner: cream of truffle soup, free-range boar chops, and mango ice cream. I think it was the best meal I ever had.

Then, I screwed it up, I told her “I love you more than the Amazon Prime remote control.” All hell broke loose. She threw my cherished snow globe at me and barely missed my head, putting a dent in the wall. “You liar! You dirty stinking liar! I hear you talking to Siri in the middle of the night: ‘Siri, show me your Good, the Bad, and the Ugly.’ It is easy to see what that’s about, pervert.”

I was shocked by Gabby’s response, I needed to get to the bottom of things—it seemed there was an inverse ratio between my expressions of love and comparisons used to convey them: the more demeaning the more effective at inducing a positive response. So, to get the conversation going, I said to Gabby “I love you more than road kill.” She blushed and moved next to me on the couch. Then, I said, “I love you more than silver and gold.” She stood up, punched me in the nose, and stalked off to the bathroom and locked herself in. My nose was bleeding. So, I said through the bathroom door: “Honey, I need a tissue for the bloody nose. I love you more than the rotten cold cuts in our refrigerator meat drawer.” The bathroom door opened and there was Gabby with a damp tissue for my nose.

Finally, I was able to ask Gabby to explain her quirky “I love you” thing. We got the vodka down from the shelf and poured a couple of glasses. I had developed a fondness for warm Mr, Boston when I was an alcoholic back in the 90s. I took a big slug as Gabby started her story recounting growing up in Guam. Her father was an Air Force mechanic and her mother was a very inexpensive cut rate whore that had married Gabby’s father when she fell pregnant, knowing that her child (Gabby) could have belonged to 50-200 other men. but, she chose to marry Gabby’s father because he was less intelligent than her and she could easily boss him around.

I took another big gulp of vodka and was starting to fade. Gabby droned on: “When we moved to the US, mother couldn’t leave the whoring behind. Soon, our entire neighborhood was on her client list. When we saw our neighbor at the grocery store, he would grab his crotch and say ‘Wo, wo, wo!’ while he looked at my mother. My mother would tell me he had an itchy infection ‘down there’ that made him cry out. For some reason Dad did not care about mom’s whoring. I would see him counting cash at the kitchen table on Sunday mornings. One morning he looked at me and smiled and said, ‘Now I can get that ride mower down at Penny’s’. I admired dad’s attitude. It was clear that he loved my mother as she was: a whore that made a lot of money. He was grateful for his lawnmower. And of course, my mother was grateful for the lack of physical abuse in their relationship which was a primary gripe among her whore friends. The difference was they had pimps and my mother had a husband (at least that’s what she said). Then, one day out of nowhere my dad said to mother ‘I love you more than a toothache.’ Everything made sense now. My father loved my mother, but not much. But there was honesty in the comparison that ‘moons and stars’ could never achieve. And for example, the toothache comparison expresses a quality of certitude of the love that can’t be achieved with moons and stars . . .”

I interrupted to tell Gabby I was going to pass out and that we’d have to do this again real soon. Then, I threw up on the table. It smelled like Mr. Boston’s ass. Then, I fell off my chair and peed my pants. The last thing I remember was Gabby kicking me and saying softly to me: “You’re just like my father. I love you more than my schizophrenia and eczema combined.”

1. “Paraprosdokian.” Wikipedia, The Free Encyclopedia. 4 Jan 2008, 03:30 UTC. Wikimedia Foundation, Inc. 9 Jan 2008 <http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Paraprosdokian>.

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Paregmenon

Posted on June 26, 2023 | Leave a comment

Paregmenon (pa-reg’-men-on): A general term for the repetition of a word or its cognates in a short sentence. Often, but not always, polyptoton.

Life, death, life, death, life, death. Does it really go on forever? What will I come back as? It is hard to even think about. I’m pretty sure my dog Skippy will come back as a dentist. He likes to chew on things, so reincarnating as a dentist is only natural. I had my teeth cleaned last week and the hygienist reminded me of Skippy with her barking out orders like “Wider!” and “Bite down!” and “Swish!” I felt like I should’ve brought a biscuit to shut her up. Then she administered the nitrous oxide. I’m not sure, but I think she climbed up on my lap and made whining sounds. Maybe it was just wishful thinking—she sure didn’t look like Skippy! Ha! Ha! With her long blond hair, she looked like an Afghan Hound.

I’m getting sidetracked. What would I, Vince Bengal, come back as? I think it works so you come back to work on something you were bad at in this life. So, if you couldn’t fix your car in this life, you would come back as a furnace repairman or a brain surgeon. My life has been a complete failure event. No wife. No children. No education. No conscience. The list goes on forever. Think of any admirable human trait and put “no” in front of it, and that’s me. It’s not like I’m Charlie Manson or Ted Buddy though. Charlie Manson was a murderous lunatic who liked to boss people around. I’m none of those things. Charlie may have reincarnated as the Pope. It’s possible! Ted is a different story. As a serial killer preying on young women, he has a lot to live down. He could be the Governor of Florida, especially with the Governor’s vendetta against Disneyworld—a hotbed of evils and transgressional employee clothing, where they dress as dogs and ducks, and worse.

So, what about me? This is harder than it seems. My first thought would be: Head of the FBI. I could fit in Herbert Hoover’s shoes. But, this is way in the future—it would be somebody else’s shoes. They would be my shoes. I would fight crimes and shoot at people. It would be great fun! I would specialize in fighting shoplifting, reviewing random CCTV footage of retail stores and food carts looking for crime: a stolen Taco or a pilfered pair of athletic socks. This is noble, unlike my current incarnation. I sell drugs to children in the housing projects. My ideal customer is 9-10 years old and gets his drug money from shoplifting and ‘reselling’ to the big guys who get their money from mugging women. It’s like the “great chain of being” some straight jerk told me about. I specialize in hard drugs, so I give the kids fair warning. Fentanyl is a real ass-kicker, and boy, do they love it. This is why I think I may be an anesthesiologist in my next life (if not Director of the FBI). Think about it. Instead of poisoning kids, I would be helping people: knocking them out without violence so they can be cut open painlessly. Or maybe, last but not least: I could be an airline pilot. I would literally get people high—in the sky! Ha! Ha! No harm done.

Uh oh! That’s a siren—it’s not the police—it’s the EMT mobile headed to scrape another kid off the sidewalk or a shooting gallery floor. I tell these kids to be careful, that they can die from this shit. That’s the extent of my responsibility. It’s like buying a handgun here in Florida: “This can kill somebody. Be careful.” What more can I do? Quit dealing? Ha! Ha! You’re joking.

POSTSCRIPT

The door flew open. It was Toby Griswold’s father and he had a gun. “My son OD’d on your shit drugs. It’s time for you to OD on lead!” BLAM! BLAM! BLAM! Vince was reincarnating on the floor as he was bleeding profusely, dying of three gunshot wounds to his chest. The great Karma Dove flew in the window and told Toby’s father that Vince was now a flatworm living in a host in South America. When the Karma Dove left, Toby’s father forgot the encounter, but remembered the message.

Vince was paying his cosmic debt for his wrongdoing. He was living in somebody’s intestinal tract outside Caracas, Venezuela. Normally, as Vince, he would be looking forward to Carnival, but he was a flatworm now. Vince was busy hunting for bacteria, as he went through life without an anus.

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

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Pareuresis

Posted on June 25, 2023 | Leave a comment

Pareuresis (par-yur-ee’-sis): To put forward a convincing excuse. [Shifting the blame.]

I had gotten in the habit of saying “My ass” if I didn’t believe something that somebody said. For example: my wife said she was at the grocery store and I said “My ass” because she had been gone overnight. She told me she did it for me—that she slept in the parking lot when she heard they were getting a shipment of coconuts, and she knows how much I love them, so she camped out knowing they would out for sale when the grocery store opened in the morning—coconuts were tremendously popular in our small northeastern town. But, the coconut shipment story was untrue—unfounded rumor. There were no coconuts when she awoke. She was “deeply disappointed.”

I almost started crying when she told me her story, all night sleeping in the car! The dismay she must’ve felt—the anger, the frustration. Poor Hunny Bunny! I could hear my 15-year-old daughter laughing in the kitchen. I couldn’t figure out what was so funny, so I asked her. Her answer was “You!” meaning me. I had no idea what she was talking about. For some reason, I was her favorite joke. Anyway, I asked my wife out to dinner as a sort of reward for what she endured (there was more laughter from the kitchen). My wife said: “Oh honey. I’m so, so sorry. My vegetarian action group is holding an all-night vigil at MacDonald’s, picketing in the parking lot, handing out brochures and playing recordings of cows being slaughtered.” Wow! My wife was amazing. Too bad I was going to be working on my stamp collection and playing Rummy with our daughter. A big night!

I woke up around 2:00 am worried about my wife. She was so brave. I decided to take a drive down to MacDonalds. I woke up my daughter and told her what I was doing. She laughed.

When I got to MacDonalds it was closed and the parking lot was empty. I panicked and considered calling the police. But then, I figured I could wait until morning. My wife always had a good reason, especially for her overnight absences. I would wait until morning and if she didn’t come home, I would call the police. She came home around nine. She looked like she had just taken a shower—her hair was wet. So, I asked her where she was all night. As she started to tell me, my daughter giggled. My wife told me: “At the last minute we decided to go to Burger King. We targeted the Cheese Whopper with our chanting ‘I’ll have a Whopper in the garbage hopper.’” I was impressed. I asked her where she took a shower. She told me her old high school friend Rod ‘Ramrod’ Carbinski had graciously offered her shower, and a place to take a nap before she came home. My daughter was laughing again. But now I could see why. There was a pattern emerging that I could not deny: my wife was competing with me for the neighborhood’s “Top Notch Parent Award.” From her all-night coconut gambit showing our daughter how to love her man, to the social conscience displayed by the vegetarian protest. And also, the sacrifice of staying out all night, sacrificing time with her family to display her love and commitment to making the world a better place.

There was a knock on the door. It was Rod. He told me he was here to pick up my wife, that she was leaving me and “running off to chase our dreams.” My wife came down the stairs toting our big world travel suitcase. My daughter shot her with the handgun I’d left on the kitchen counter after I had blown a squirrel off the bird feeder. I called 911 and told them there had been a shooting. Then, I called Denise: “It finally happened—daughter off to prison no need for a divorce. I’ll explain later.” Rod was blubbering under the kitchen table.

My daughter was laughing.

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

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Paroemia

Posted on June 24, 2023 | Leave a comment

Paroemia (pa-ri’-mi-a): One of several terms describing short, pithy sayings. Others include adage, apothegm, gnome, maxim, proverb, and sententia.

As I looked at the scar across my left hand and my permanently crossed fingers, I thought of the saying “Barking dogs don’t bite.” It was a little multi-colored mutt about the size of a muskrat. It was barking. I reached down to pet her and she tore into my hand. She would not let go. She just looked at me a growled, with my hand in a vise grip. After a half-hour, I was starting to get really worried. That’s when my friend called 911. He had a hard time convincing the dispatcher to send help. It wasn’t their typical fare—gunshot wound, flipped over SUV, choking Grandpa, guzzling Clorox, poked out eye, etc. This was different.

Soon, we heard the siren of the approaching ambulance. It squealed to a stop and the 2 EMTS burst through the front door. They could’ve just turned the doorknob, but they trained to smash through doors, to save time in “entering premises.” One of the EMTS tried not to laughs when he saw the dog hanging from my hand. He said, “Jeez, I didn’t think dogs came that little. He looks like a puppy.” I said, “Yeah, a puppy that’s been grinding away at my hand for the past hour. Where the hell have you been?” He said, “We were actually saving a women’s life. She was having trouble finding a towel to dry off with after her shower. We stopped Sear’s along the way and commandeered a bath towel. We got to her condo just in time to dry her off and keep her from slipping on the wet floor and dying. Then, we came here to deal with your joke bite.” He pulled a Jack out of his bag. The idea was to use the Jack to separate the dog’s jaws. It didn’t work. They couldn’t fit the Jack in the dog’s mouth. Then, they tried doggie treats. Didn’t work. Then, one of the EMTS said: “We’re gonna have to anesthetize the dog.” I yelled “Why the hell didn’t you do that in the first place?” “It’s called ‘triage.’ We start with the least effective treatment and work our way up. It case of the dog, if anesthesia does not work, the next step is to shoot it out in the yard. Don’t worry, the “euthanizer” has a silencer so your neighbors won’t be alarmed by the gunshot.”

The dog’s owner (my little sister) went berserk. She grabbed the dog, with my hand still attached, and hugged it to her. She was not going to let go. She swore they’d have to drag her out into the yard and shoot her too—she would die alongside Midgy. I was now a a car on a pain train. I was the locomotive. Midge was a passenger car, and my little sister was the caboose. I just wanted to leave the station—uncoupled from Midgy! it was a terrible analogy, but it worked for me under the circumstances.

It was time to inject Midgy. The needle was big, the dog was small—even though I was in pain, I had trepidations. In went the needle and Midgy went limp! I pulled my bleeding hand out of her mouth and literally jumped for joy. After seeing my ripped up hand, the EMTs gave me a shot of morphine for the pain. Meanwhile, Midgy was showing no signs of life. I did not want to be there when she kept not showing signs of life. However, I saw Midgy’s leg twitch as I went out the door, I hoped it was a sign of life. I could barely walk and had encased my wounded hand in a Wegman’s plastic bag so it wouldn’t drip on the floor. My girlfriend helped me to the car and we headed to the hospital to get me stitched up. As we entered the Emergency Room, the security guard asked me if the plastic bag was recyclable. I said I didn’t know. He said: “Ok. Sir, please remove the plastic bag. You may replace it with this paper bag. Don’t worry. There’s no charge.”

I was hoping this wouldn’t be like my last visit when I had a gallstone that could not have been more painful, but the doctors were concerned I was faking it because I wasn’t crying. Instead, I rolled around on the floor moaning while I was interviewed by a policeman from the narcotics division under the assumption that i was a drug addict faking a gallstone so I could get a fix. It was hell. I squeezed out a tear after 20 minutes and the interview was terminated. I got my painkiller.

Now, already high on morphine, I was led to my “outpatient” stitchers to get my hand fixed.

I walked through the door and there was a teen-aged boy sitting there in a Boy Scout uniform. The doctor told me his name was Billy Jackson and that Billy was 16 and was working on his First Aid merit badge. The doctor said, “He’ll sew you right up!” After the doctor helped him thread the needle, we were ready to go. Billy sprayed my hand with Lidocaine and jammed the needle in. I was so drugged up that I felt nothing at all. After he finished, Billy told me to keep it dry—to put it in a recyclable plastic bag when I took a shower.

I’m suing my little sister for what her dog did to me. She has insurance, so it is no big deal. I should probably sue Billy too—his stitch-job left my index finger and middle finger permanently crossed. I frequently get accused of insincerity when I make promises and people see my crossed fingers. Hmmm. Maybe I’ll go after Billy too. The Boy Scouts probably have some kind of merit badge insurance.

I’d like to say, “All’s well that ends well,” but I can’t. My poor little sister has started drinking. The 2 EMTs were convicted of burglary for stealing from unconscious victims. Billy was caught pilfering narcotics from the hospital, Midgy had puppies.

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

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Paroemion

Posted on June 23, 2023 | Leave a comment

Paroemion (par-mi’-on): Alliteration taken to an extreme where nearly every word in a sentence begins with the same consonant. Sometimes, simply a synonym for alliteration or for homoeoprophoron [a stylistic vice].

“Seven skillets sat sizzling—searing scallops—suddenly started smoking, then flaming like volcanos on the Mexican desert.” The quote is from Bonomo Fluenzia’s collected works titled “Blades of Gas.” He was devoted to writing incoherent books and essays. He felt it was paramount to cast off the desire to make sense and the struggles it entails that undermines human happiness with the never-ending quest for meaning—a mental illness known as hermeneutiosis, where you spend all your waking hours tied up in acts of interpretation. Fluenzia advises that you just write whatever spews into consciousness, paying no mind to verbs and adjectives, and all the other parts of speech that block creative writing’s freely flowing river of words—making them into marshes infested with mosquitoes and leeches.

Fluenzia believes that speaking in tongues is the paramount literary achievement. It’s incoherence is complete—so complete that is taken as the voice of God. Sitting and listening, and knowing you’re not expected to understand it, is relaxing, and affords you a glimpse of what life will be like on the other side, and an incentive to be born again and join the sheep at the river flowing to Jordan or Jersey City, the exalted hub of wonder and joy. Wonder and joy. Cheaper than New York—affordable housing, good clubs.

All of the above is the gist of a lecture I’ve given over and over to great acclaim. I am a professor “Words” at Alexander the Great Community College in Vester, MA. I am paid by the state, so I don’t put much effort into my professional life. There are so many regulations that I’m untouchable. Once, I ran over a student in Parking Lot B. I nearly killed her, but students are not permitted in Parking Lot B. I got off for “failure to see something that was not supposed to be there.”

Anyway, I am marked as a literary traitor. Fluenzia stands in opposition to the hoax called creative writing. Aligning my interests with his put me beyond critical evaluation by peers. As Fluenzia wrote: “Once opened the can cannot top the gong of swinging life, mud, and mayonnaise.” We do not need to know what this means—interpretation’s “other” takes pride in the bliss of nonsense and the alphabet’s inevitable “Z.”

POSTSCRIPT

Professor Trapp was convicted of arson for trying to burn down “Alexander the Great Community College.” Not very creative, as was most of what he did, Trapp used gasoline in an empty Clamato bottle. He stole the gasoline from the groundskeeper’s storage shed. He threw the flaming bottle into a urinal in the faculty restroom. A colleague quickly flushed the urinal, extinguishing the flames, and a thwarting Trapp’s plan. Trapp was sentenced to five years in prison where he watches “Mr. Rogers Neighborhood” and has a reading club with fellow inmates. They’ve just finished “Tom Swift and His Rocket Ship.” Next, it is their goal to read the entire “Nancy Drew” series.

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

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Paromoiosis

Posted on June 22, 2023 | Leave a comment

Paromoiosis (par-o-moy-o’-sis): Parallelism of sound between the words of adjacent clauses whose lengths are equal or approximate to one another. The combination of isocolon and assonance.

“How many roads must a man walk down before he buys a car?” This is one of my best. I’m an amateur, but I’ve put a lot of time into studying ads. I’m in the used car business where advertising is like the Wild West—we have continuous advertising show-downs—mostly over interest rates, down payments, monthly payments and credit reports. It’s all in what we say—and never, never do we play. It is serious business selling used (aka previously owned) cars. I’ve been a shyster ever since I was 11 when I sold my “Radio Flyer” wagon to the neighbor boy for $10.00. When the front right wheel fell off, I showed him the guarantee I had made up—basically, it said there was no guarantee. I kept his money and there was nothing he could do.

The annual “Best Preowned Automobile Ad” competition is coming up in a couple of weeks. I have won it every year for the past ten years. This year, my brain has dried up, but I’m going give it a shot anyway. Maybe I’ll cheat. My first winning ad was “A white Sportcoat and a pink carnation, you need a car to get to the dance.” Teenagers whined to their parents—it was merciless. It got even crazier when we offered a free bottle of vodka with the purchase of every car. The parents snapped it up and martinis became popular and divorce rates for infidelity soared. There were divorces and remarriages all summer long. The streets were littered with empty vodka bottles and thrown wedding rice that birds were eating and exploding in flight.

All because of my ad! I was proud and weirded out at the same time, but I vowed to keep writing ads for “Tidy Rides.” The name emphasizes our commitment to selling cars that are tidy—minimal rust and smell good inside. The good smell is really important. Many of our cars come from auctions where they specialize in death traps—cars that people died in, but were not found for awhile, so there’s often a very very faint smell of decayed flesh. But these cars are so cheap, many decent men buy them for their wives for grocery shopping, picking up dry cleaning, and drag racing on Sundays. This shouldn’t be surprising. My wife has filled our mantle with trophies with little gold-colored plastic cars on top. She finds drag racing “self-fulfilling.” I don’t know what that means, but it keeps the peace. She drives a Chevy 2 with a Corvette engine.

Back to my ads. I’m really stuck this year and I probably won’t win. I feel like I’ve come to the end of the road. Hmmm. Road. “You can’t hit the road without a car.” Sounds like somebody getting ready to run away. Not good. What about this: “Life is a highway, but you need reliable transportation.” Pretty bad. “Time to trade your shitmobile for a tidy ride.” I like it!

I liked it, but nobody else did. It came in 102 out of 104. 104 was “Car, car c-a-r, stick your head in a jelly jar.” Whoever submitted that had guts. I met her at the awards banquet. The first thing I noticed was her belt buckle. It was made from a rear-view mirror from a ‘48 Caddy. She was wearing a hat made from a ‘64 Pontiac hood ornament—where Chief Pontiac glowed dimly through a golden lucite sculpture of his head. I was dumbstruck, but kept my mouth shut. I didn’t want to give her any ideas. My relationship with my wife was bad enough already.

I couldn’t sleep. The thought of the “Car-Car” girl was driving me crazy. I got up and drove to the junkyard. It’s where I go when I’m troubled, I even had my own key to the gate. I was so much better off than the crushed and dismantled vehicles, it always made me feel good. Oh my god! There she was tearing the chrome strip off a Ford Fairlane. Then she started eating it! I was about to run, but she saw me! She smiled and walked toward me with the chrome strip in her hand. She said, “Car, car, c-a-r, stick your head in a jelly jar.” I ran. I had wet my pants, so I was in a hurry to get home. I never saw her again, but I couldn’t get the jelly jar thing off my mind. I even tried sticking my head in a jelly jar. It wouldn’t fit, but it left a circle of grape jelly on top of my head, like a crown.

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

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Parrhesia

Posted on June 20, 2023 | Leave a comment

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

Please forgive me, but your taste is tasteless. I’ve kept my mouth shut for as long as I could. Now that we’re here in Tahoe on our honeymoon, I ‘m gonna tell it like it is. This is the ideal time because our desire to be together is peaking. You’re still wearing your wedding dress, which looks like a scoop of coleslaw garnished by your head. I know you paid thousands for it—one of the biggest wastes of money in the universe. And, my God, your shoes looked like high-heeled locomotives. $400. Crazy! When you modeled your bathing suit, I almost threw up. It looks like a onesie you’d dress a baby in for bed. The only thing missing are the pablum stains down the front. I have no idea what color it is. Purple? Maroon? Brown? Jeez! Burn it! And please don’t wear sweatpants when we go out to dinner—especially the ones with your high school cheerleader logo—“The Leatherstocking Lepers” (“Leapers” spelled wrong—nobody ever caught it? Bizarre!)

Oh wait—the reception’s decorations. Why the hell did each place setting include a sponge and a nutcracker? What’s the message: our marriage is a mess that needs to be sponged up, and you’re going to crack my nuts? This kind of obscure symbolism is for Tarot card readers, not for newly married husbands and wives! Also, the wedding cake was rectangular 12”x 8” and 2” high. The icing tasted like soap suds. The pieces were the size of dice. It was awful. What we’re you thinking?

Now that we’re married, you are moving into my condo. It overlooks San Francisco Bay and I’ve lived there on my own for five years. You say you want to redecorate. I say “No!” If I turn you loose to make changes in the decor, I’ll probably have a seizure when I come home from work and look at it every evening. Besides, my sports decor suits me perfectly. Life-sized cutouts of the Giants’ lineup! Autographed gloves hanging on the wall. Swivel catcher’s mitt chairs in the living room. Dugout bench for a couch. Willie Mays tableware. Batter’s Box bed with matching home plate pillows. There’s more honey, but I can’t see why you would want to change it—even a tiny little bit. I even got you a pair of flannel Giants pj’s so you’ll fit right in—you and me in the dugout!

So, first thing when we get home, let’s get your looney hairdo revamped. It’s like you have a flying saucer on your head. I expect Martians to crawl out of your ears. Ha ha! You should get your hair done like my mother’s. Even though she has to use orange juice cans as curlers, it is so lovely when it is done. I think she calls it a “bouffant.”

Well, I could say a lot more about your poor taste, but I think I’ve said enough. Why are you packing? We don’t leave until Wednesday. Oh, I know—you’re gonna throw that stuff in a dumpster!

She hit him over the head with her suitcase, knocking him unconscious. She dug his wallet out of his back pocket while he lay there. She Googled “annulment” on her smart phone as she rode the elevator down to the hotel lobby.

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

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Pathopoeia

Posted on June 19, 2023 | Leave a comment

Pathopoeia ( path-o-poy’-a): A general term for speech that moves hearers emotionally, especially as the speaker attempts to elicit an emotional response by way of demonstrating his/her own feelings (exuscitatio). Melanchthon explains that this effect is achieved by making reference to any of a variety of pathetic circumstances: the time, one’s gender, age, location, etc.

I had lost my dog Pogo. I never should’ve let him out when they were picking up the garbage in front of my house. There was something about garbage that set Pogo off. I figured I could just follow the garbage truck and I’d find him, nose to the ground and barking his signature “boo-woo-woo” bark. I caught up with the garbage truck. Pogo wasn’t on the trail and he was nowhere to be found following the garbage truck.

I panicked. There was a good chance that Pogo had jumped up into the garbage truck’s hopper, been raked in, and compacted. It would be a fitting death for Pogo—assimilated to the garbage he so dearly loved: to become one with a half-eaten tuna casserole, left-over meatballs, an open jar of mayonnaise, coagulated gravy, rice and whatever else a garbage bag would hold: a garbage bag torn open and garbage strewn all over the back porch. I would get so mad at him. I would lock him in basement. I would consider having him put to sleep. But, I couldn’t do it. When he was a puppy, we fed him table scraps, and he developed an affection for them that was greater than his affection for us—he was addicted to tables scraps and we didn’t intervene. We just yelled at him and locked him in the basement. He would whine and I would yell “Shaddup mutt!” Now, he was likely dead in the back of a garbage truck.

The garbage man told me he’d be emptying the truck at the landfill at 4.30. He told me I was welcome to come and watch and see if my dog “fell out.” I was there when they started dumping. After about 20 minutes, Pogo came sliding out. He had a t-bone steak bone wedged in his mouth. I walked over to him to wrap him in the blanket I’d brought to bring him home in the trunk of my car and bury him somewhere in the back yard. In a way I was relieved—a major pain in the ass removed from my life: I tried to fight the feeling of relief, but I couldn’t. When I saw he was breathing, I cursed my luck. But I had no choice. He was my dog.

After thousands of dollars in vet bills, Pogo is 100%—100% pain in the ass as he’s always been, and he’s developed a new habit: dragging his butt across the living room carpet. We understand it’s worms and we’re taking him to the Vet to get a diagnosis and medication. This is life with our dog Pogo. I kick myself every day for not letting him die in the landfill.

I’ve built him a run in the back yard so we don’t have to let him into the house. As we anticipate his death from old age in a couple of years, we use words like “liberated” or “set free.”

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

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Posted in pathopoeia

Tagged elocutio, figures of speech, rhetoric, trope

Perclusio

Posted on June 18, 2023 | Leave a comment

Perclusio (per-clu’-si-o): A threat against someone, or something.

The note taped to my front door said: “If you don’t stop it, I will make you pay.” I tore the note off my door. I crumpled it up and went inside where I flattened it out again on the kitchen counter along with the five other identical notes I had received that week.

I had no idea as to what I was doing that would be so objectionable to somebody that they would make me “pay.” I mean, the wildest thing I did was to have a vegetable garden in my back yard. It was 5X5 feet and had zucchini, tomatoes, and yellow squash growing in it. How could a fresh tomato induce a threat? I was definitely missing something. So, I had one of those video surveillance cameras installed over my front door. Anybody walking up the sidewalk would trigger the camera, making it record.

I was excited when I got up the next morning. I opened my door and there was no note! The camera had acted as a deterrent! I linked my Bluetooth to the camera for the heck of it, to see if there was anything there. What I saw shocked me! There was a really big raccoon ferociously battling with a man in black wearing a torn balaclava. I went outside and there was blood on the sidewalk. It couldn’t have been the raccoon’s because his opponent had no weapon. I’d never heard of a raccoon killing a parson, so I figured my taunter was still alive.

It was near noon, so I headed to Food Manger to get some pre-made tuna salad for lunch . It had chopped pickles and onions in it, and I loved it. As I walked up to checkout, I was shocked to see that the bag boy Rod’s face was covered with superficial scratch marks. “Ah ha!” I thought. “So how did you get those scratches?” I asked like a policeman. Rod said he had tripped and fallen into a rose bush, where the thorns had given him “a pretty good scratching.” I asked him what kind of roses they were. He stuttered and muttered “I don’t know.” I asked, “Have you ever had a fight with a raccoon?” He laughed nervously and dropped the bag he was filling. I yelled, “Answer me before I find that raccoon and ask hm!” I don’t know why I said that—I was trying to sound tough. He said, “No, no, no!” Then he said, “Ok. Ok. You got me. You caught me. I’ve been putting the threatening notes on your door.” There was only one thing I wanted to know: “Why?”

He told his story: “I wanted to win the ‘Lightening Bagger Award.’ I wanted to be the fastest bagger so I ignored the the lower rack on the shopping carts. Part of my job is to hoist up what’s on the rack so the cashier can scan it. It could cut as many as 20 seconds off my bagging time by ignoring it. But I noticed you had caught on to what I was doing. You were piling prime cuts of beef on your cart’s bottom rack., whereas, it was supposed to be used for kitty litter, bags of charcoal or potatoes—things that wouldn’t fit in the cart. Clearly, piles of expensive cuts of meat would fit. You exploited me. I got angry and started writing the notes. I was going to make you pay for the meat if you didn’t stop jeopardizing my winning the ‘Lightening Bagger Award.’”

I was shocked—there he was, nice little Rod, standing there with scabs all over his face. The Food Manger Manager Joseph was standing there and heard the whole thing. He told Rod to get rabies shots—they would be covered by Food Manger’s health insurance plan.

Rod kept his job, but was put on five years probation, and moved to the back warehouse where he opens boxes of canned goods, monitored by CCTV. I am making restitution in lieu of serving an 18-month sentence in state prison. Rod was able to remember all the meat I pilfered—it’s like he’s some kind of grocery check-out idiot savant.

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

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Posted in perclusio

Tagged elocutio, figures of speech, rhetoric, trope

Polyptoton

Posted on June 13, 2023 | Leave a comment

Polyptoton (po-lyp-to’-ton): Repeating a word, but in a different form. Using a cognate of a given word in close proximity.

I took the metro to the hospital. I was wearing my Kevlar vest. The fleet of police cars had been sidelined due to a recall for sirens that exceeded OSHA sound parameters. Cops were going deaf and it was Sam’s Sounds’ “Whoop Whoop Pull Over 26” that was the culprit. It was manufactured in American Samoa where rules were loosened to help their economy. Usually, the sirens were tested on rats. If the rats’ ears bled, the siren was rejected. Our city’s Samoan police car sirens had not been tested. We now had a police force with impaired hearing. “What?” was the most frequently said thing at the Station or out in the field. For example, “Man down!” would elicit a “What?” This resulted in a significant jump in police and bad guy fatalities. The Department was due for hearing aids once the lawsuit was settled with with Sam’s Sounds, who would probably go out of business. In the meantime, a number of officers had taken to carrying small plastic funnels and sticking them in their ears when conversing. However the funnels were useless when handcuffing a perpetrator or beating him on the head with a truncheon. There were also the comedic moments when an office would mishear,. For example, an arresting officer would bring bring in a perpetrator and say “We’ve got a new guest” to the desk sergeant. The desk sergeant would hear “breast” instead of “guest.” And respond “What? Breast?” and everybody would laugh, most of them not knowing why, because they didn’t hear the desk sergeant’s response.

It was a total mess.

I had been on “medical” leave when the new sirens had been installed, so I missed their effects on my ears. In retrospect, my running around the Station in my underpants for three days making mooing sounds was a blessing. Now, as the “last man standing” the Chief had dispatched me to the hospital to apprehend a “shooter” who had killed several people with a blowgun with poison-tipped darts. When I got off the METRO, everybody on the platform wanted to know “Who will kill the killer?” I said “Me” and pulled out my service revolver.

When I entered the hospital, I immediately saw the shooter coming toward me with his blown-gun to his lips. He was not a very tall man. He had a Beatles-type haircut, no shirt, was wearing what looked like a kilt made out of hay, and penny loafers with white socks. I saw him start to inhale, so I shot him, unloading my revolver into his torso. I was pretty sure he was dead, but I reloaded and shot him six more times. I received the “No Collateral Damage Award” for not killing any innocent bystanders during the execution of my duties at the hospital. There was a ricochet that killed a service dog, but that didn’t count.. I got a pay raise too.

We found out that my victim was an Anthropology professor from Straight Line Community College. He had gone crazy and was obsessed with testing the blowgun he had obtained in Sri Lanka on his most recent research expedition—he purchased it at the airport gift shop and was concerned that it was just a cheap knock-off. Saying that he had “morals” he targeted “really sick” people at the hospital. Well, we decided he was “really sick,” and that terminating him was permissible, or “All in a day’s work” as we say here at the Station, or “All in a day’s wok” as many of my colleagues would hear it.

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

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Posted in polyptoton

Tagged elocutio, figures of speech, rhetoric, trope

Polysyndeton

Posted on June 12, 2023 | Leave a comment

Polysyndeton (pol-y-syn’-de-ton): Employing many conjunctions between clauses, often slowing the tempo or rhythm. (Asyndeton is the opposite of polysyndeton: an absence of conjunctions.)

I put on my socks, and my pants, and my shirt, and my belt, and my running shoes. It didn’t matter how far, or where to, I ran. My name is Victor and I am a jogaholic. I became a jogaholic when I was on the Albert Cramer High School track team. I ran the fifty yard dash, sort of like drag racing with your feet. I started running to the bus stop. I’d always get a window seat toward the front. I wore my jogging shoes constantly, only taking them off to scratch my athlete’s foot and rub on some EMUAID— a special blend of Emu fat, and watermelon juice, and floral scents—rose, peony, and jasmine.

At school, I ran to my classes. Once, I slammed into my wood shop teacher and a pint bottle of vodka fell out of his shop coat and broke on the floor. He made me clean it up. When I ran to the trash can with the broken shards of glass, Billy Stricken tripped me and I had to run to the school nurse’s office with a bleeding hand. She gently and firmly told me that I am a jogaholic. My running everywhere was a clear sign that I was afflicted. As I ran to the playground, I was hit with a sense of relief. Prior to my diagnosis, I thought there was something wrong with me because there was nothing wrong with me! All my friends were “sick” in some way. Marcy was cross-eyed. Tim still wore diapers. Melanie had a mustache. Reggie was a bed-wetter. Billy was schizophrenic, Fern had total-body eczema. Freddy wore rubber gloves. Suffice it to say, the list of maladys goes on and on, and on.

So, given the company I was in, I saw no reason to seek a cure. But the school reported my affliction to my parents, who had always been aware that something was so-called “wrong” with me.

As I was running from the bathroom to the living room, my father yelled “Stop!” He was holding a pair of lead deep sea diver boots. Each one weighed 20 pounds and they were designed to help keep the diver under water. My father told me to put them on. I did.

I could barely walk, let alone run. My father told me as long as I lived under his roof, I would wear the diver’s boots everywhere. I had trouble climbing the stairs to go to bed that night. But, when I got to my room and took off my boots, I ran around my room, wearing my cherished running shoes. I felt free.

On graduation day, to my father’s great sorrow, I removed my diver’s boots and donned my running shoes. I ran to the stage to receive my diploma and grabbed it like a baton in a relay race and kept on going. My dysfunctional and differently-abled friends cheered confirming my commitment to living as a jogaholic. Billy even waved his medication bottle over his head.

After running around aimlessly for a few years, I landed a job as a pinch runner for the Lancaster Roadrunners, a minor league baseball team. I love running out onto the field when I’m called to steal a base, or just run them. I have gotten married to a wonderful woman who has come up with creative ways to manage my malady. For example, she straps me into a wheelchair when we go shopping. We get a better parking place, plus I can’t run away. I’d wear my diver’s boots to the mall, but they are very tiring and too slow. However, both my wife and I wear diver’s boots at home. We move in slow motion around the house like a couple of sloths in love.

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. There is a Kindle edition available for $5.99.

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Posted in polysyndeton

Tagged elocutio, figures of speech, rhetoric, trope

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