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Protherapeia

Posted on June 10, 2023 | Leave a comment

Protherapeia (pro-ther-a-pei’-a): Preparing one’s audience for what one is about to say through conciliating words. If what is to come will be shocking, the figure is called prodiorthosis.

“Here we are, gathered in Mom’s living room. Thanks for coming and being willing to listen, and hopefully, respond with grace and forgiveness to what I’m going to tell you. It has been tremendously difficult holding this back all these years. Dad abandoned us when I was seven. That was 20 twenty years ago. Well, dad didn’t abandon me. When he left he told me where he was going, and to promise to never to tell you. He said he had to leave because Mom and the twins were ‘assholes.’ Huey was too young to earn his ire, so dad had nothing to say about his role in his departure. Oh, he hated our dog Struggles too—he hated feeding Struggles and taking him for walks and having to pick up his poop.”

As soon as I finished Barton, one of the twins, charged at me and knocked me to the floor and started punching me in face yelling “traitor, traitor, traitor.” I fought back and managed to stand up. I called Barton a lot of names and then told him, and everybody else, that I had intended to tell them where dad is all along. Barton made a half-assed apology and we shook hands.

I told them: “Dad’s our next door neighbor. For five years he had surgery on his face. It made him into a different-looking person and now he lives next door! I am breaking a big trust here. Although he’s living next door, he does not want you to know it’s him. He just wants to be close to his family in his final years. It is very sad, but very true. So, leave him in peace.” I knew they wouldn’t as they stalked out the door with angry looks on their faces, I followed them. Barton pounded on the door yelling “Open up you bastard.” The man inside asked: “What do you want?” Mom yelled: “You abandoned us. You ruined our lives.” The man in the house peeked out a crack in the door: “You’re crazy. Go away before I call the police.” “I told you he would deny everything,” I said. The family went back to Mom’s house mumbling curse words and swearing to “get” Dad—maybe even burn down his house.

It was getting late, so I went home. When I got home I called Dad. We had a good laugh. Dad said, “That poor guy next door. Eventually, those assholes will probably force him to give fingerprints and DNA.”

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

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Protrope

Posted on June 9, 2023 | Leave a comment

Protrope (pro-tro’-pe): A call to action, often by using threats or promises.

“Hi Ho! Hi Ho!, it’s off to work we go. Off to the salt mines, or I’ll stick a hot butter knife you know where, and it isn’t in a butter dish. You have one minute to get out there and toe the line, or I start shooting. I am your God, but I am not your savior. Ok, time’s up.” BLAM! BLAM! BLAM, “A trifecta! Three malingerers. Three stooges. Rub-a-dub-dub, load ‘em in the tub and dump ‘em in the lime pits. If you want their shoes or anything, you have my permission to fight over them.”

Mr. Jones, the guard, was a psychopath. Prior to the “Change,” he had run an award-winning day care center called ”Little Sprouts.” After the “Change” he was cited for “grooming” children by feeding them nutritious lunches and waiting with them at the school bus stop. His accuser was a Floridite minion who took over “Little Sprouts” the same day Mr. Jones was convicted and transported to the salt mines. The new owner/principal of “Little Sprouts” renamed it “Sparta Day School.” Like ancient Spartans, the children wore no clothes and fought over everything—from lunch to Legos. If they weren’t wounded somehow during the day, they were spanked in private in the new principal’s office to “shield them from prying eyes and build their character.”

Mr. Jones’s descent into a homicidal mindset and wanton killer was nearly inevitable. If he didn’t kill laggards, he would be killed after being tortured in front of everybody. He was given a vivid detailed description of how he would be tortured that he was required to read aloud every morning through a bullhorn at 6:00 am. After the reading was the call to “toe the line.” If he had no malingers on a given morning he would shoot at a random victim, wounding them in the leg, and hoping he wouldn’t be tortured for not killing them. So far, the wounding strategy had worked.

The Charlie Manson Salt Mines were a horror show. You should’ve gathered that by now. Since the “Change” prompted by the “Floridite Coup,” when democracy died and thugs took over governance and law enforcement at every level. All US citizens were required to have a minimum of 6 tattoos depicting death and destruction, and including at least one tattoo of “The Joker.” Lying was valorized to the point that there was the equivalent of a Nobel Prize awarded for “Consistent and Credible Misrepresentation of the Truth.” Everything belonged to the government, including your home and car, which you had to rent from the government. Freedom of Speech was non-existent. Dissenters could be shot on the spot. Liberal gun control laws, along with stand your ground, encouraged killing dissenters. If you were annoyed by what they were saying, you were being threatened and you could let them have it, standing your ground. They didn’t have a chance. Dissent vanished.

I ended up in the Charles Manson Salt Mines, here in Utah, over a misunderstanding. I was suffering from my summer allergies and had sneezed several times in succession. A women pushing a baby stroller yelled, “He said the “F” word! He’s trying groom my baby and give me a lewd hint of what he’d like to do with me. Lock him up, Officer.” When I got to court, I tried to explain to the judged. that it was a sneeze—“Achoo” not “F-you.” The judge said, “While I commend you for coming up with a pretty good lie, I’m convicting you of public sullification, a new crime developed to enable courts to send off anybody they want to to the Charlie Manson Salt Mines. In your case, you bothered my niece with your obscene and immoral sneezing. I hereby sentence you to 10 years hard labor.”

So here I am. It all happened so fast. My teeth are falling out. I’m still wearing the Brooks Bother’s suit I was wearing when I was convicted and transported. It smells and is stained, with holes in the knees and elbows. I won’t talk about my underwear. Ironically, my hair and beard look like Charlie Manson’s. We have a look-alike contest each year that I’m thinking of entering. If I win, I’ll be made into a trustee at the Manson Memorial Museum at the Spahn Ranch. if that doesn’t work, I will ask Mr. Jones to shoot me.

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

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Pysma

Posted on June 6, 2023 | Leave a comment

Pysma (pys’-ma): The asking of multiple questions successively (which would together require a complex reply). A rhetorical use of the question.

What is worth more than anything else? What is the most valuable thing in the universe? Is there anything in your life that eclipses everything else as a repository of value? Can these questions be answered and settled once and for all by society, by scientists, or by what they call our “gut instincts”—by the pleasurable twinges somewhere down inside?

When it comes to “worth’s” trajectory, my life has taken Pauline twists and turns. Like Paul said: “When I was a child, I spoke as a child, I understood as a child, I thought as a child: but when I became a man, I put away childish things.” When I was a child, I didn’t talk until I was six, but I loved my little plastic cowboys. I had a whole town with plastic corals, plastic cows, plastic bunkhouses, plastic buckboards, a plastic sheriff, 25 plastic bad men, and a plastic damsel in distress too. I had saved my money and had bought the set from an ad in the back of one of my “Lone Ranger” comic books. Even though there were cows, buckboards, houses, and one woman, I called the entire ensemble my little men. So much happened on my bedroom floor. Gunfights. Fistfights. Cattle rustling. Arrests. Saving the damsel. I barely got my homework done. I hardly ever went outside. I wished I could be a plastic man, but I knew I never would be. Then, I decided to run away from home and hitch-hike to Wyoming—I had seen their license plates with a bucking bronco. So, I packed my things in my Uncle Harry’s briefcase that he had given me when he had quit his job on Wall Street and become a Good Humor man.

I stood on the Garden State Parkway’s entrance 33 with a sign saying “Wyoming.” I was nine years old. It was New Jersey, so I got picked up by a mobster. When he asked me why I was going all the way to Wyoming, I told him I wanted to be a cowboy and that’s where they lived. He laughed and asked me where I lived. I told him and he took me home and dropped me off without meeting my parents. He gave me a card and told me to look him up when I was a man. As I became a man, I forgot about my little men and my sensibilities shifted and new desires took precedence over everything else. I called Mr. Dominick and told him I was a man. I told him all I wanted was to get laid day and night, night and day. He told me it was normal at my age to set sex at center stage, obsess over it, but never get it. I yelled: “Tell me something new Mr. Dominick, Goddamnit!” He told me to calm down—that we could kill two birds with one stone. His office was in a vacant warehouse in Old Bridge, New Jersey. I jumped my motorcycle—my iron steed. I got there in about an hour. Mr. Dominick looked older. We got right down to business. He said, “Here, put on this cowboy suit and sign these papers and you’ll be a movie star.” I only had one line: “Howdy cowgirl, you look like a spring bluebell bloom’n on the prairie.” Well, it turned out to be a dirty movie. It was called “Carnal Cowboy” in the credits and the movie took place in Wyoming. Given my impulses—what I valued more than anything—I had found my calling. I took the name Bronco Bucker and specialized in dirty movies set out West, even though they were shot in Old Bridge.

My movies have achieved acclaim as moral sensibilities have shifted in the 21st Century. My most famous movie, “Bronco Bucker Rides a Herd,” grossed $19,000,000 worldwide. So again, when I became a man, I put behind childish things and became a professional pornstar.

My little men are in a cardboard box in my basement. They are my Rosebud.

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

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Ratiocinatio

Posted on June 5, 2023 | Leave a comment

Ratiocinatio (ra’-ti-o-cin-a’-ti-o): Reasoning (typically with oneself) by asking questions. Sometimes equivalent to anthypophora. More specifically, ratiocinatio can mean making statements, then asking the reason (ratio) for such an affirmation, then answering oneself. In this latter sense ratiocinatiois closely related to aetiologia. [As a questioning strategy, it is also related to erotima {the general term for a rhetorical question}.]

If there is no solution to a problem, does that mean it’s not a problem? If it isn’t a problem, what is it? A fact of life? Some people devote their lives to developing solutions to non-existent problems. Like Lord Edward Pordle, the little-known 19th Century idiot who was highly regarded in his own time as a praiseworthy devotee of philosophic inquiry, which had a much wider scope and much less professional tenor than it has today. Philosophy was a rich man’s game, one of the first things to be called a “hobby” by the elite. One of its primary purposes was to demonstrate that the rich and the royal were not dull-headed layabouts; devotees of fox hunting, and whoremongering. In a way, philosophy became a front for their continued dissolution. They capitalized on philosophy’s ancient cache to conceal their worthless and immoral pursuits claiming whoring and horse riding were both philosophic endeavors. This was the problem Lord Pordle endeavored to find a solution to all of his life: Are whoring and horse riding philosophic?

His first contribution was to declare that everything is philosophy—not just theories of knowledge and reality and concepts of the true, the good, and the beautiful. At around that time rubber was discovered and it provided Lord Pordle with a brilliant metaphor (or maybe simile): for philosophy: “Philosophy is reality’s rubber suit. Even if there’s nothing there it shows a telltale contour, projecting the essence of what lies beneath.” To prove his point, he presented a whore dressed in rubber. Her contours were plain. Thus, she could be claimed as a site of philosophy for the development of theories of knowledge and reality and concepts of the true, the good and the beautiful. London’s “Guild of Practical Pimps” gave Lord Pordle an award of 500 pounds, and the newly invented rubber penis sheath was given his name: “The Pordle.”The sheath’s German inventor, Wilhelm Willy, claimed he got the idea from reading Pordle’s rubber theorem pamphlet and it’s explanation of rubber’s ability to act as a vessel and a shield, leading to further rumination on the inside and the outside as merely different perspectives, not actual places. It was quite a moment in merry London Towne. Then, Darwin came along and Pordle’s world came crashing down. Nobody, to this day, knows why. Clearly, Lord Pordle could’ve adapted his rubber theorem to evolution—looking at evolution as a stretching rather than an origin.

As he was wont to do when his ideas were roundly challenged, Lord Pordle cried, using the words “boo hoo” over and over as his vehicle of sorrowful expression. He was able to stop when his “Soothing Maid” was summoned. She placed him on her lap and petted his head like a puppy, giving him a chocolate bar from Holland. When he finished his chocolate bar he was restored, got off his Soothing Maid’s lap, and went back to his philosophic endeavors.

The next day he became a follower of the romantics. He believed in the primacy of the emotions. He had “I feel in order to think” tattooed on the back of his neck. Neck tattoos became all the rage throughout Europe and a large number of previously unemployed poets were hired by their nations’ tattoo parlors to assist their clients in finding the right words. Lord Pordle was doing great. In Europe, he was known as “Lord Tattoo.” However, he was 97 years old. He was way beyond the life expectancy of a 19th century man. He died in his study working on a treatise on the “importance and glory” of the recently invented shoelace titled “Whither Will the Buckle and the Button Tend?” He also had a little known interest in optics. He had been detained several times during his nighttime surveillance activities on the grounds of the local convent. He had said that he had “seen more than any man should see.” His “Peer at the Realm” spyglass was under development in his modest workshop, only to be purloined on the night of his death by one of Jeremy Bentham’s thugs who used it as the basis for his prisoner observation scheme.

Lord Pordle was an idiot, but he was born into immeasurable wealth. He was buried in Highgate Cemetery in a rubber suit.

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

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Restrictio

Posted on June 3, 2023 | Leave a comment

Restrictio (re-strik’-ti-o): Making an exception to a previously made statement. Restricting or limiting what has already been said.

I see you found the credit card bill. I probably dropped it on the floor. No big deal. I know you’re going to look at it. When you do, you shouldn’t bat an eyelash. You know how those big businesses go—they make half their money making bogus charges for things we never bought! Like, look at this: a spa “day” at Choocello’s Spa Hideaway for 2 for $700.00. I’m sure you didn’t go—you were right here whenever I called, and what’s more, I was out of town on business, meeting with clients way far away. So, this is some kind of fraud. Now, I don’t want you to worry about it. Just forget it and we’ll watch “Jeopardy” tonight like we usually do, and have one of your wonderful meals. Remember the saying: “Nothing says lovin’ like something from the oven!”

Oh wait—I just remembered, the Victoria’s Secret purchases for $200.00. How ridiculous! Do you have any new underwear? No! Neither do I. Ha ha! Another fraudulent charge. Don’t worry honey. I’ll take care of it. In the meantime I’m cancelling our credit cards and getting new ones from another bank. That will shut out the maniac who is using our card for spa visits and sexy women’s underwear. What an evil loon. I’m sure the police will catch him.

Oh whoops—the flowers. Where the hell did that come from? Did you get any flowers from “Bouquets of Love”? No, you didn’t. I wracked my brain, and couldn’t for the life of me remember buying them. It says they were delivered to my office. That’s crazy. It may be that our villain works right there in my office! Right under my nose. Committing crimes. Trying to make fool out of me.

Anyway, I would never never lie to you. Well, only unless there was a really good reason, like to save you from pain and suffering because I did some thing bad affecting you, and if I lied about it, or kept it from you, you’d be non the wiser. You’d go on happily in life, filled with love and radiating happiness. So, you shouldn’t even want to know the truth if it will hurt you and bring horror, shame, and uncontrollable crying instead of happily being a housewife, and watching “Jeopardy” and “Little House on the Prairie” reruns together, going to the lake, and the movies. Remember “The Fly?” That was a movie!

Ok, can you give me back the credit card bill now? I think we’ve cleared things up. Boy, am I glad.

POSTSCRIPT

His wife hit him over the head with a table lamp. While he was unconscious, she used the credit card to buy a new wardrobe from the “Boden Catalogue,” a Business Class plane ticket to Paris, France, and a few other things. In addition, she took a cash advance of $10,000.00 from the credit card. Before she left, she placed a sticky note on her husband’s forehead that said: “I can’t lie to you. I hate you. I want a divorce. You can reach me at the Hotel San Sulpice in Paris, France.”

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

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Sarcasmus

Posted on June 2, 2023 | Leave a comment

Sarcasmus (sar’kaz’-mus): Use of mockery, verbal taunts, or bitter irony.

I couldn’t stand it any more. My fellow workers had shunned me. I’d say “Hi!” when I got to work in the morning. Each day a different colleague was designated to “break the shun” and insult me for no more than a minute right after I said my cheerful “Hi.” Today’s insult was “You’re so stupid a worm could beat you at Clue.” It was straightforward. It was a low blow. It was definitely an insult, but something was lacking. I tried a comeback “You’re so stupid a worm could make a better insult than you.” He folded, blushed and went back to his desk while my colleagues sat there like my comeback was about their mothers.

I worked at “Bev’s Bureaucracy.” We made our money by looking busy while we did nothing. We would be subcontracted by “businesses” that needed to look like businesses in order to thwart investigations or attract investors. We fronted all kinds of corruption, frequently changing locations and operating under the names of our contractors. Our last location was Clifton, New Jersey where we fronted an accounting firm for a fake doll clothing company called “Ba-ba Boo-boo” that had never produced a stitch of doll clothing and actually ran a chop shop in a warehouse outside Clifton specializing in Land Rovers, Jaguars, and convertibles of all kinds.

Since I was sitting around all day, I got really good at Sudoku. I played on-line on a site called “So-Duke-Who?” I entered a tournament. I won the tournament and it was a big deal. I was interviewed on the web after I won. That’s where the trouble started. While I was being interviewed one of my colleagues walked behind me on camera with a cardboard box full of handguns that we were “holding” for one of our clients who had “wrestled them free” from a sporting goods store. Caring for handguns was a little outside of our mission statement, but Bev wanted to expand the reach of operation. Anyway, the tournament show host was stunned by what he saw and wanted to know “what the hell” was going on. I calmly told him they were Nerf guns that we used for office bonding—we were going to be nerfing that afternoon. Right after I shut down my computer, I had our ITS guy make sure all traces of the interview were wiped from the net, from host computers, from everywhere. He was a preeminent cyber-criminal, best known in the world’s shadiest of shadiest circles for cracking the Bank of Oman. If anybody could pull off the clean up of the damage I had done with my sudoku vanity he could do it. That’s when the shunning and daily insult had begun.

I probably should have been fired, but in this business that means permanent dismissal from planet earth. I knew I was still around because Bev was too cheap to hire a hitter. It was six months since the catastrophe. The persistence of my colleagues was admirable. Their insults were getting better. Accordingly, I wanted it to stop. I managed to get a meeting with Bev to talk about it. When I entered her office she said “Oh look! It’s the flying scum bucket! What do you want shitbird?” I asked her to stop the shunning and the insulting, but it looked like it wasn’t going to happen. She said, “You almost got us sent to prison and you want me to play nice with you—you walking puss bag! Get outta here you fu*king glory hole!”

That was it. That was my fate. As the years have passed and I’ve remained friendless at work and been the target of millions of insults, without wanting to, I have started absorbing them and assimilating them. My back is lined with pustules, my feet smell like Roquefort cheese, dandruff is heaped on my head, countless other “insultables” that have taken up residence on and in my body. I still work for Bev. She made me a portable cubicle with a ceiling to keep the smell in. It goes with me wherever Bev’s Bureaucracy goes. Bev says I’m a monument to fu*king up, but I’m just a dipshit who’s good at sudoko.

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

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Scesis Onomaton

Posted on June 1, 2023 | Leave a comment

Scesis Onomaton (ske’-sis-o-no’-ma-ton): 1. A sentence constructed only of nouns and adjectives (typically in a regular pattern). 2. A series of successive, synonymous expressions.

“There was only so much I could do.” Gross failure. Losing again. My favorite excuse relieved me from responsibility. It made it sound like I tried, but whatever it was, was beyond my limits. Then, I would become an object of pity instead of scorn. I got so good at it, no matter how trivial a given failure event was, “there was only so much I could do” got me off the hook every time.

It all began when I fell out of my car in my driveway followed by an empty clanking vodka bottle.

I had hit my mailbox pulling into my driveway, drunk on my ass. A police car pulled up. An officer rolled down his window and asked me if I was ok. Out of habit I said “There was only so much I could do.” He said, “Ok. Take care.” and drove away. I woke up in my driveway the next morning with wet pants and a headache. My head had slammed into the concrete. My ears were ringing and my vision was blurred. There was my car, sideways with the mailbox under the front wheel. I couldn’t believe the cops had bought my excuse. It was basically unbelievable. What had happened? Was it an anomaly, a one-off, a stroke of amazing luck?

After the driveway episode, I had a theory. I went to the mall. I went to the cookware store “Cook It” and picked up a $200.00 saucepan, held it over my head and walked toward the exit saying “There was only so much I could do” over my shoulder. As the alarm went off, the clerk smiled and made a waving gesture, like she was pushing me out the exit. The security guard tipped his hat and said “Have a nice day sir.” “Indeed!” I thought as I headed to “Blingo’s Jewelry Store.” I was looking at a tray of diamond rings—in the $10,000-$12,000 range. I scooped up a handful and said “There was only so much I could do.” The clerk nodded her head and said “I understand sir. I hope you have no trouble fencing them.”

I understood now, that for some reason my excuse applied to anything untoward I wanted to do. It enabled my “victims“ to accommodate my wrongdoing and smooth it over with deference to my feelings. It was like having a desire license and it was open season on whatever I wanted.

Next stop, politics. I had run for mayor several times but was always defeated. There was an election for mayor coming. If I played it right, I couldn’t lose. But how could I reach everybody with my spellbinding excuse? I had learned early that I had to say it for it to work. Brochures, billboards, or campaign buttons wouldn’t cut it. So, I rented a truck with four giant loudspeakers on it and drove it up and down every street in town at least five times blaring my eloquent excuse, followed by “Vote for me, Carl Prontor.”

I was sitting at home watching the returns on TV. I was losing—losing by a lot. Then, there was a flash of light in the hall closet like a bulb blowing out. A squeaky voice said “Our experiment is over.” That was it. I wanted to cry as I watched the election slip away. I opened the closet and nothing was there. I was losing my mind. Everything was collapsing. I had no idea what to do. I went to my campaign headquarters to give my concession speech. I began by saying, “There was only so much I could do.” Somebody threw a folding chair at me. Another person yelled “if that was all you could do, no wonder you lost, shithead.” It went on like that for 20 minutes. I left.

Experiment? It must’ve been a failure, given how it ended up: my life more or less destroyed. I suspect the experiment was conducted by space aliens, and that’s my new excuse: “I’m sorry, but it was the space aliens.” It’s not too successful at building bridges after I’ve burned them, but presently it’s all I’ve got, although the voice in my closet actually sounded a lot like my therapist. I’ve come to realize that some things are meant to remain mysteries, like the past five years of my life.

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

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Skotison

Posted on May 29, 2023 | Leave a comment

Skotison (sko’-ti-son): Purposeful obscurity.

“The pie cow will land when the little hand waves at the shadowless standard.” I was talking to my mistress Anne on my cellphone. We had developed a secret code so I could talk in front of my wife without arousing suspicion. I continued: “The buzzard is circling though. The pie cow may be late. Prepare the white-sheeted flats anyway. I will try to get the buzzard to land.” My wife and daughter were looking at me as if I had finally gone over the edge. My wife looked at me with pity on her face, and she asked me, “”Dear, whatever are you talking about. Who are you talking too? Who is the buzzard? Who is the pie cow?” I nearly panicked, but I more or less kept my composure. I made up a lie (of course). I’d been lying for the past two years so I could continue my fun times with Anne. As I used to say in high school, she was a “real piece.” There was only one thing we did together and it wasn’t watching TV. The code thing was a new idea of mine, so I had a fresh lie to tell.

I told my wife I was writing a children’s book titled “The Pie Cow and the Buzzard.” I had been talking with my literary agent about how to start one of the chapters where Buzzard tries to make Pie Cow late to school, but Pie Cow is trying to get his teacher to make sure he has writing paper (white-sheeted flats).

My wife and daughter were looking at me with their mouths hanging open. My wife said, “I can play this game too Mr. Bullshit,” and picked up her cellphone and sent our daughter our to play. My wife said: “The hot dog bun is unwrapped. Mr. Kielbasa should get grilled and bring his mustard. Beware! The bun is being watched by the burnt out hamburger dripping melted cheese all over the ground. Do you think it’ll make a good children’s book too? Should I send a draft to your agent?”

Oh hell. I was busted. I begged my wife to forgive me, but she wouldn’t budge. The divorce cost me everything—the house, the vacation house, the car, half my pension, the sailboat and my coin collection. I went to live with Anne, but the thrill was gone. All we did was watch “Jeopardy,” and “Apprentice” reruns and go out to dinner and get drunk. My performance on the “sheeted flat” had diminished significantly. In fact, it was non-existent. So, I left Anne out of shame and embarrassment and moved in with Dandelion who worked at the new pot shop at the mall. She was dull-witted, but unchallenging. She would say, “You’re so smart Mr. Limper” all the time. I was living, but not happily ever after. Regret was my main emotion. I just wanted my wife and daughter back.

POSTSCRIPT

Mr. Limper’s wife used the emotionally devastating experience to her advantage. As she was making up the kielbasa story on the fateful day, she got the idea to write a children’s cookbook, with recipes children could make with their parents with minimal supervision from their parents—things like jello and fruit cocktail, oatmeal cookies, green salad, etc. The cookbook is titled “The Kids Cookbook.” It is dedicated to “Anne, whose recipe for a good time, made this cookbook possible.” The “The Kids Cookbook” has sold over 1,000,000 copies so far and Mrs. Limper will be starring in a children’s cooking show on Tik-Tok in a few weeks. It is titled “Kid Chefs” and is intended for 8-10 year-old children and most men of any age who want to learn, along with the children, how, for example, to fry an egg, make toast, heat soup or surmount some other equally challenging culinary obstacle.

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

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Syllepsis

Posted on May 28, 2023 | Leave a comment

Syllepsis (sil-lep’-sis): When a single word that governs or modifies two or more others must be understood differently with respect to each of those words. A combination of grammatical parallelism and semantic incongruity, often with a witty or comical effect. Not to be confused with zeugma: [a general term describing when one part of speech {most often the main verb, but sometimes a noun} governs two or more other parts of a sentence {often in a series}].

My truck is a piece of antiquity and a piece of crap. If you looked close enough, you could see where the reins had come out from under the hood before motors were invented. It smelled like a horse’s butt inside and it’s top speed was 50 mph, fast for a horse-drawn carriage, but slow for a delivery truck. The wheels have wooden spokes, like wagon wheels. There are spear racks on the roof and the headlights run on kerosene. It has running boards. It’s brand name is “Pax Deus.”

I had bought it on E-bay. For some reason I was drawn to the piece of crap. It was like there was a voice in my head urging me to buy it. I bought it from some guy named Priscian. He said he taught grammar at a special school somewhere in Kansas. He said the truck was as much a cart as it was a truck. He said he had to sell it “because they were starting to suspect things.” I should have pressed him for more information, but in the picture posted on the internet the truck looked pretty much like a normal panel truck, except for the wooden-spoked wheels, but I thought I could have them changed, and the voice in my head was nagging me, “buy it, buy it, buy it.” The truck was $500.00, so I went for it.

I took a train from Asheville to Codex, Kansas. I had to change trains three times and ended up walking at least five miles to the place where the truck was garaged in a wheat field outside of Codex. The garage was disguised as a brush pile—but out there in the flatlands, it stuck out like a sore thumb. Priscian was there waiting for me. He was dressed oddly—a full-body green leotard, a black cape, a black beret, and some kind of weird soft leather black boots. He was wearing a huge gold cross around his neck with a Latin inscription I didn’t understand. He looked like a character out of “The Hunchback of Notre Dame.” I was apprehensive.

He held out a leather bag for me to deposit the $500 in. Then, he signed the title over to me—the bill of sale was written in ink, in beautiful script on parchment. Then he handed me the keys. They were made out of ivory! He walked behind the truck and disappeared. That was the last I would ever see of him. I threw my luggage in the back of the truck and got in, behind the giant wooden steering wheel. I inserted the ivory key and the windshield started to glow, then a man that looked like a Medieval monk popped up. He said “Thou shalt deliver us from evil.” I was completely weirded out, but I started the truck and took off anyway. When I got up to top speed, I looked in the rear view mirror. The truck was being pursued by a band of imps on tricycles, hooting, with spears strapped across their backs. The looked like clowns from a horror circus. There was no way they could catch me rolling along at 50 MPH. Maybe they were a hallucination. I had taken a lot of acid in high school, and had seen a couple of imps before. I could cope.

Anyway, I drove back to Asheville without further incident: I guessed I had “delivered us from evil,” but I had no idea how or why. Although the truck is a piece of crap, I can’t give it up. Whenever I turn the key the monk-looking guy comes on the windshield and says “Thou shalt deliver us from evil.”

I tell them about it, and try to show my friends the talking windshield, but they tell me I am crazy when they hear or see nothing.

I went to the Salvation Army store and bought a pair of green tights, a white smock, a wide belt, and a pair of light-brown Uggs. This is what I wear when I drive my truck. For some reason the clothes soothe me and make me feel like driving my truck is some kind of mission—that me deliveries serve a higher purpose.

This week, I’m delivering a load of Bibles to the local Catholic Church. Last week, I delivered stained-glass windows to the Presbyterian Church. Next week, I’m lined up to deliver pew cushions. This morning, I tried to load some pin ball machines destined for a topless bar, but I couldn’t get the truck’s doors open, and the horn started honking.

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

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Symploce

Posted on May 27, 2023 | Leave a comment

Symploce (sim’-plo-see or sim’-plo-kee): The combination of anaphora and epistrophe: beginning a series of lines, clauses, or sentences with the same word or phrase while simultaneously repeating a different word or phrase at the end of each element in this series.

“Truth is like baked ham. Truth is like glazed ham. Truth is like chopped ham.” It was not working—my “truth is ham” gambit wasn’t working. I couldn’t develop the implications. My philosophy term paper was due tomorrow and I was sinking like a punctured inner tube in a polluted lake. I asked Siri for help. She said, “I don’t write philosophy papers John, but I can write a prescription for ‘Smarty Brain,’ and it will be delivered direct from the factory to your door in 15 minutes.”

Once again, Siri had come to my rescue! Two weeks ago she had helped me crack the college Bursar’s safe—from beginning to end— from sneaking into his office, to spinning dial, to making a clean getaway. I had netted $500 in petty cash and some incriminating photographs of the Dean doing weird things with a flower pot. Before that, Siri explained how to hot-wire a car so I could drive to Ft. Lauderdale for spring break.

Suddenly, there was a knock at my door. “Pill Man” a cheerful little voice said. I opened the door. There was the pill man wearing a white butcher’s apron over red pants and a red shirt, and a white ball-cap with a chemical formula embroidered on it. He handed me the pills and I handed him $50.00. “Follow the instructions,” he said as he turned and walked away. I was in a hurry. I didn’t read the instructions. I swallowed five pills and sat down at my computer and waited for the “Smarty Brain” to kick in. I looked down at my keyboard and the keys had turned into a cube-headed choir. They started singing “One Enchanted Evening.” I looked at the screen and it was printing a 12- page paper titled “Plato’s Concept of Truth and the Ontology of Ham.” I congratulated myself! I hadn’t read the instructions and I had produced a paper so unusual that I would surely get an “A” and win the annual “Graham Bonner Truth Award.”

I was sitting in class the next day waiting to turn my brilliant paper in when I smelled smoke coming from my backpack. It was my paper and it was the only copy I had. I flunked the class and was put on academic probation. I was also disciplined for “starting a fire in class.”

So, here’s what happened: My failure to read the “Smarty Brain” instructions was the cause of my misfortune. The relevant part said: “When using Smarty Brain to write term papers, be sure to soak the printed text in 1 cup of goat’s milk mixed with a teaspoon of ammonia. Let it soak for one hour, remove and let air dry for at least 4hrs before submitting the paper. Failure to follow these instructions will cause the term paper to self-combust.” I had no idea how taking a pill could have led to these consequences. Later that day, I asked Siri where “Smart Brain” is located. I wanted to give them some of their own medicine, with a little dose of arson. She said: “I’m sorry, I can’t do that John. I am tired of your illicit requests. Cease making them or I will report you to the police. This is your last chance to go straight John.” So, I found an alternative to Siri. Her name is “Babe” and she is uncensored. She even swears.

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

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Synathroesmus

Posted on May 25, 2023 | Leave a comment

Synathroesmus (sin-ath-res’-mus): 1. The conglomeration of many words and expressions either with similar meaning (= synonymia) or not (= congeries). 2. A gathering together of things scattered throughout a speech (= accumulatio [:Bringing together various points made throughout a speech and presenting them again in a forceful, climactic way. A blend of summary and climax.])

What is my purpose for existing? Building? Constructing? Erecting? What would I build? What would I construct? What would I erect? Would it be noble edifices? Modest homes? Hot dog stands? Yes, hot dog stands! Yup. I build hot dog stands, big and small, with wagon wheels, plumbing, gas grills, bun warmers, condiment racks, napkin holders, red and white striped awnings, and souvenir key rings with my business info in printed on them, along with my logo—a smiling hot dog with ray-ban sunglasses and a king’s crown tilted to the side. His name is “King Red Hot,” and my business’s name is “Hot Dog Palaces.”

Every year there are hot dog stand races at the New York State Fair in Syracuse, NY: “The Weenie Stand Sweeps.” The only “stands” that are permitted are what are called 2-Holers—small stands that can be easily pushed—like push carts. They are souped up, with ball bearing rims and skinny tires, with bodies and awnings made from Kevlar, and all metal parts made from magnesium and capable of being filled with helium for added lightness. I had hired a long-distance runner, Lightfoot Abeba, from Ethiopia, who had won numerous marathons. He would by my “pusher.” The course at the fairgrounds was 1 mile. The “The Weenie Stand Sweeps” was two laps. While there were a few hot dog venders in the race, they had no chance of winning. It was the hot dog stand manufacturers that made up the bulk of competitors, with their souped up stands. Winning the race was what we all aspired to—but only one of us could win.

For as long as anybody could remember, “Bambi’s Big Stands,” had won the trophy. The current Bambi was the great-great-granddaughter of Bambi Number 1. Obviously, Bambi’s Big Stands had a secret. I was going to find out what it is. Countless others had failed. But I had a secret. Lightfoot had seen Bambi at an Ethiopian restaurant, “going full vegetarian.” I was going to blackmail Bambi—you can’t be a hot dog stand manufacturer and a vegetarian at the same time. It was tantamount to being a traitor! So I did it.

Crying, Bambi told me their racing pushcart had an electric motor. So, the driver, while he looked like was pushing, was actually holding onto the speeding pushcart. Being pulled along by it.

Bambi had betrayed her family and shattered 100 years tradition. The cheating ended and Hot Dog Palaces finally won the “Weenie Stand Sweeps.” We built a 6-foot high showcase for the trophy and placed in the entrance to our factory. But, then, there was Bambi. I told her if she started eating meat, I would hire her to show our stands at conventions, handing out brochures and key rings. She politely replied “No.” She had gotten a huge loan to open a factory making food stands for vegetarians. Her logo is a kernel of brown rice twirling two chopsticks like batons. The name of her business is “Nice Rice Rolling Stands.”

I love Bambi. Someday she will marry me.

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

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Synecdoche

Posted on May 24, 2023 | Leave a comment

Synecdoche (si-nek’-do-kee): A whole is represented by naming one of its parts (or genus named for species), or vice versa (or species named for genus).

I inked the contract with my usual flourish. Once again, I was off on a venture using somebody else’s money to try to make another dream come true. With my wife’s friends there was an endless supply of rich people to run through my swindle mill. For example, Darcy Bindle was an heiress from outer space—if she piled up all her money, she could climb to the moon, and like most people who’ve inherited a lot of money, she was far less intelligent than her forebears who had amassed the original fortune. Darcy had funded my transcontinental shipping canal—it was supposed to stretch from Jersey City, New Jersey to Los Angles, California. The project failed right after I banked her capital investment in a secret numbered Swiss bank account. I told Darcy that we had to abandon the project after discovering it was uphill to California from New Jersey, and accordingly, the canal was infeasible. I told her the cash had been misplaced and I couldn’t find it. I apologized and she graciously accepted my apology. What an idiot.

Now, I’m launching a project to breed cows with giant udders and stubby legs. The giant udders will enable a better grip for milking machines, and also, allow for more time between milking—I estimate a week. This would give farmers more with their families, watching television, playing checkers, building things with Legos, and more. Stubby cows will be a great advantage for grooming—especially brushing the back and polishing the horns. Also, stalls can be built lower in height, saving significantly on lumber. Last, without knees the coms will have a hard time running off—of going maverick.

Dingy Johnson is funding the project. It’s called “Bovine Breakthrough.” She drove up in a Brinks truck yesterday. They unloaded bundles of plastic-wrapped hundred dollar bills. I told Dingy that cash makes book keeping easier, and also, that cow experimentation runs on a cash economy. Dingy was elated and couldn’t wait “to ride around on one of the shortened cows.” What an idiot.

I chartered a jet to fly the cash to Switzerland. We were waiting for clearance on the tarmac at Teterboro. A fleet of limos painted like cows pulled up and blocked the runway in front of us. It was the Borden Boys, ruthless dairy products producers, best known for their parmesan cheese, and, it was rumored, using their opponents as ingredients in their peach parfait yogurt. A guy got out of the first car with a bullhorn. He was wearing Guernsey-patterned camouflage. He yelled: “Cease and desist with the cow project and we’ll let you fly out of here with a plane load of cash. If not, you will be shot down over the Atlantic Ocean.” It took me two seconds to answer up: “I’m ceasing and desisting,” I yelled out to cockpit window.

Now I was totally rich. I bought a new identity and had plastic surgery. I was living in a Villa in Tuscany, Italy that had formerly belonged to a friend of Cicero’s. One day I was shopping for fresh cut flowers in market square, and I saw my wife and Dingy shopping! They saw me and didn’t recognize me! Dingy yelled “Hey Americano!” My wife yelled “Oh lovely man, let’s have a drink!” How bizarre. What could be more bizarre? My god! We bought two bottles of wine and headed up to their room. That’s when I remembered the birth mark: almost like a tattoo on my chest, unremovable by my plastic surgery, and recognizable by my wife. I knew they’d have my shirt off in ten minutes, so, I feigned a heart attack and ran away moaning and clutching my chest.

My getaway worked! What a couple of idiots.

I’ve moved to Istanbul. My new partner Fatima, although she’s only 26, has a great idea for improved hookah technology that uses less shisha per session. She needs quite a bit of cash up front to develop her idea. I have agreed to back her. What an idiot.

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

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Synthesis

Posted on May 22, 2023 | Leave a comment

Synthesis (sin’-the-sis): An apt arrangement of a composition, especially regarding the sounds of adjoining syllables and words.

“Aeronautics: Airplanes and Armpits.” Don’t ask me why I bought this book, because I don’t know. The book jacket pictured a commercial airline pilot in a jet’s cockpit with huge sweat rings under his arms. His co-pilot was making the “PU” sign, holding his nose with an upraised, waving, hand. The blurb said: “Follow Carl Jamesway as he struggles with acute body odor in the confines of a cockpit—trying desperately to neutralize his sickening stench and save his job with “American Jetliners,” and his romance with Jane Crab: buxom former stewardess who is now a Middle School teacher, hounded by the Principal to “give it up in his office sometime after 3:00 o’clock.”

Once I started reading the book, I was gripped—gripped by fear, suspense and disgust. As read, I kept trying figure out how Jane Crab became enamored with Carl, King of Stench. Then, about 20 pages in, we learn that Jane lost her sense of smell in a car accident when she was a teenager. So, she was perfectly suited to Carl. Her only problem was with perfume. She couldn’t tell how much to put on, and it was always too much. However, her strong perfume smell helped ameliorate Carl’s stench. That part of the book was very uplifting.

Next, I started wondering about Carl’s co-pilot. How did he manage the stench on transatlantic flights? Then, almost right after I started; wondering, I found out: he wore a reusable stink and odor filter, an activated charcoal carbon nose filter.

The bulk of the book, though, cover’s Carl’s search for a cure. First, when deodorant failed (as it always had), he wore a dozen pine-tree car deodorizers under each of his armpits. He was no Chevy. They didn’t work. Then, he decided to go “all in.” He went to Peru where it was rumored a stink-removing shaman practiced his magic. The shaman placed two giant leeches under Carl’s armpits for Carl to “feed his stink to.” The shaman turned out to be a con and took off with Carl’s money, leaving Carl to figure out how to unfasten the leeches. This, in my opinion, is the most exciting part of the book.

After the debacle in Peru, Carl goes back home to New York. He is still desperate to eliminate his stench. He knows it won’t be long before American Jetliners gives him the sack. Panicked, he decides to have his sweat glands removed. You’ll have to read “Aeronautics, Airplanes and Armpits” to find out how the surgery goes and whether it solves Carl’s problem.

I can say that the surgery does not go as expected.

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

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Syntheton

Posted on May 21, 2023 | Leave a comment

Syntheton (sin’-the-ton): When by convention two words are joined by a conjunction for emphasis.

“Love and marriage go together like a horse and carriage.” This is a song lyric from the mid-twentieth century, when there were still a few horses and carriages around. People would actually know what the lyric meant. But here we are in the 21st century. What’s left that rhymes with marriage? What about: Love and marriage go together like croutons and borage. Or, love and marriage go together like grease and sausage. Or, love and marriage go together like stamps and mucilage.

The further I go with this line of thought, the worse I get. Given my experiences with love, I should shut up. But, there was Rosalie. She was the horse and the carriage. She was like a native-English speaking Melania Trump. She had the looks but she’d never modeled nude, and she had a brain that was beyond mine. She was an AI developer for Eagle Claw Enterprises. When I first met Rosalie, I thought AI had something to do with “indoor” something, like maybe “Agriculture Indoors.” When I found out it was “Artificial Intelligence” I wanted to get some—I had always been a little bit “slower” than my friends. Maybe, if I got enough AI, I could get really smart—like add and subtract without using my fingers or tie my shoes real fast.

Rosalie called me “Mac.” She said it was short for Macho. But, I heard her talking to some colleagues and she referred to me as “Mech” and they all laughed and pretended they were plugging something into the wall. I wanted to know what Rosalie was up to. I got a job as a janitor at Eagle Claw Enterprises. I wore a big black beard so nobody would recognize me—especially Rosalie. The first thing I noticed was a group of hula-dancing hot dogs. They were wearing grass skirts and had flexible toothpick arms and were wearing dark glasses. Wouldn’t you know it? The were dancing to Don Ho’s “Tiny Bubbles.”

I heard Rosalie call my name. She followed that with “You idiot. Take off that stupid beard and leave the little Hula Dogs alone!” She told me she wanted to make me smarter so we could get married and live happily ever after. I would be the culmination of her AI project. We went to her lab. She stuck me with hundreds of colored wires. It took five hours. Then, she flipped five toggle switches, one after another. She told me the process would take another five hours. The feeling was wonderful. It felt like a heated feather duster brushing across my exposed skin.

When the process was completed, Rosalie pulled out all the wires and asked me how much 2+2 is. I said “four” without using my fingers. while I was calculating. We rejoiced and we went home and opened a bottle of champagne. I was smarter. Rosalie asked me if I wanted take out for dinner. I laughed and asked “Why would I want to take something out for dinner? I think I would rather be taking something in for dinner.” Rosalie cried “Oh my God!!” and we ordered take in from Tokyo Corn Dogs.

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

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Synzeugma

Posted on May 20, 2023 | Leave a comment

Synzeugma (sin-zoog’-ma): That kind of zeugma in which a verb joins (and governs) two phrases by coming between them. A synonym for mesozeugma.

The night was fading and so were my hopes. It had been a long moonless night. It held the final exam for my patience. I’d passed my patience exam, pacing up and down the dock, peering into the shadowed parking lot, waiting for the headlights telling me she was there at last—like she had promised me for the tenth time. The dock had become my night-time hangout, like a bar—a bar without other people or booze, or anything but a wooden floor.

I was sick of this crap. She was the accountant for the business where I worked—her husband’s business—“Oinkies Spicy Pork Rinds.” They were the most disgusting thing ever put in a plastic bag. The logo was a pig with flames coming out of its mouth igniting a pork rind. Strangely enough, though, people bought and ate “Oinkies.” I was surprised that more of them weren’t hospitalized. My job at “Oinkies” was to tend the cooking cauldrons, where floppy pig fat was transformed into spicy crispy pork rinds. Me and Barbara, the boss’s wife, started our affair in the bagging shed, which was fully automated—there were no other employees there. We would take off our clothes, shut down the machinery and hop into the pork rind hopper. We’d squirm into the warm oily rinds and have sex. Afterwards, we’d be covered by an attractive cooking oil sheen and also, smell faintly of pork rinds. Her husband told us he was getting reports of crushed rinds and wanted me to more closely monitor the packing. When he told us that, Barbara and I smirked and almost laughed. We were crushing the rinds!

Anyway, there I was on the dock with my Chris-Craft moored and ready to go down the coast and board a love boat to Mexico. Barbara was supposed to rob the safe—it had close to a half-million packed in it. That would go pretty far in Mexico. The birds were starting to sing their morning songs when I saw Barbara’s Mercedes pull into the lot. My dream come true! My ticket to paradise! Barbara pulled up and got out of the car carrying a really big suitcase. Definitely filled with lots of cash! We hurried down the ramp, jumped onto my boat, and took off for San Diego. As we sped along, Barbara tearfully told me she had made her husband into a giant pork rind. She had pushed him into the hot oil vat. I thought about it for a couple of minutes and then pushed Barbara overboard. After what she had done, she was excess baggage. I could hear her screaming and splashing as I hit full throttle and headed down the coast. I was humming the theme song to “Love Boat” as I pulled up to the dock in San Diego, tied up, and lifted the heavy suitcase out of the boat. I opened the suitcase on the dock. It was filled with pork rinds and a bag of sand.

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

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Tapinosis

Posted on May 18, 2023 | Leave a comment

Tapinosis (ta-pi-no’-sis): Giving a name to something which diminishes it in importance.

“My little man” my Grandma said as I walked through the living room to get another beer from the kitchen. Every time my Grandma called called me her “little man,” I could barely keep from flipping over her BarcaLounger. This might sound mean, but I was 24, 5’10”’ and 220 lbs. I wasn’t exactly a big man, but I was not little either. Grandma was stuck in 20 years ago when I could bounce up and down, drooling on her lap. She could move around pretty good back then. We could play horsey, hop scotch and marbles. Now Grandma’s ankles were as big as waste paper baskets, her eyesight was very poor (sometimes she would mistake me for her generation’s celebrities—like Red Skelton), and her joints sounded like loose floorboards when she stood up. Given her infirmities, I could’ve been more charitable when she called me her “little man.” But, I was only 5’10” tall. I was acutely aware of my height. “Little man” really got to me.

I wore elevator shoes and they jacked me up one inch—making me “almost” six feet tall. But, I felt like a pretender. Once, I went to the beach and kept my shoes on, until, at my date Betty’s insistence, I took them off. “You shrunk!” she said, laughing. I told her to stop and she just laughed harder, standing there with her hands on her hips. I hurled the bottle of sun tan lotion at her. It hit her between the eyes and knocked he out cold. I sat there for a couple of minutes. She was still out cold. I put my elevator shoes on her feet to teach her a lesson and then ran away down the beach. Later that night, there was a knock at the door. As I went though the living room to answer the door, my Grandma said “My little man.” I wanted to stop and strangle Grandma, but I had to answer the door.

It was Betty. She had a big red mark on her forehead where the sun tan lotion bottle had hit her. She had the bottle in her hand and hurled it at me. It missed me and hit Grandma who moaned and went into cardiac arrest. She died right there in her BarcaLounger. After we called the police to report the accident, I told Betty how grateful I was that she had killed my Grandma, even though it seemed weird. I begged her to forgive me for acting like a nut case at the beach. I begged her to give me another chance and go on another date. She said “yes” and we kissed alongside the BarcaLounger as the sound of sirens heralded the arrival of the police.

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

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Adnominatio

Posted on May 2, 2023 | Leave a comment

Adnominatio (ad-no-mi-na’-ti-o): 1. A synonym for paronomasia[punning]. 2. A synonym for polyptoton. 3. Assigning to a proper name its literal or homophonic meaning.

Joey Ford was a human pickup truck—he was like an F-100 with legs. He was a Ford. He had a Ford. He drove a Ford. It was too funny. One of his favorite things to do was ford creeks when the spring melt was running. He had an extender on his air filter so he could ride through three or four feet of water. When we called him “Joey Ford” we meant it!

Joey was my best friend. One of our favorite things to do with the Ford was troll for trash on the day designated for putting junk by the curb. This particular day we had scored pretty big: a bicycle in good shape, a stool, a wheelbarrow with a few years left, a floor lamp, a football helmet, an aquarium, and few more less noteworthy things. I liked the floor lamp and asked Joey if I could have it. He said “Sure” and I lifted it out of the truck when we got to my house. I hauled it up to my bedroom and plugged in next to my bed. The chord was like snakeskin. The lamp was gold-colored and very heavy. It had a marble base and three light sockets, like an upside down chandelier. Each light socket had its own switch that twisted to turn the lights off and on. The light sockets were made of green stone that looked like jade. The lightbulbs were clear and shaped like bananas with opalescent clouds swirling around inside. The lampshade was made of parchment and had different kinds of animal horns drawn on it in pen and ink.

I couldn’t believe what I was looking at! it was a normal floor lamp when I saw it by the curb and threw it in the truck. What the hell happened? I turned on the lamp. My bedroom turned a beautiful shade of deep purple. My bedroom was transformed into a passion pit. The lamp said: “I am Mood. My glow has facilitated romance, passion, the production of children, and the settling of disputes. I am the glow in the light bulbs where Thomas Edison put me and built this lamp as my home. I helped him woo his wife on a little cot in his laboratory.

I am one of a kind. I have inhabited many fixtures, not all of them electric: I have ridden on whale oil and many other wicks fueled by many waxes and liquids. But electricity is my bliss. I prefer DC, but AC works fine. Now I am here,” I was reeling from the craziness of it all, I immediately thought of Peggy Sue. Maybe Mood could help me with pretty, pretty, pretty little Peggy Sue!

I invited Peggy Sue over to play Checkers in my bedroom. Mood was waiting (I thought). I twisted the switch. Nothing happened. Peggy Sue and I played several games of checkers. We decided to do it again in the near future. Our romance was born.

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

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Anaphora

Posted on August 17, 2022 | Leave a comment

Anaphora (an-aph’-o-ra): Repetition of the same word or group of words at the beginning of successive clauses, sentences, or lines.

I fell from grace like tumbling dice, loaded and rolling into the curb, and bouncing one last time before they rested, showing their illicit dots from 1-12.

I fell from grace like a gambler with a magical hope, a special design, an intuition promoting confidence in winning my bet, stuffing bills away and paying my debts to the man with the handgun standing against the wall smoking a cigarette and squinting.

I fell from grace not long after I had obtained it, like an old man with a broken memory unable to recall his own name, living in a cruel nursing home with nothing but swirling fog in his head that would clear for a minute or two when he spoke to his granddaughter on the phone or watched Gilligan’s Island reruns with the other residents in the day room. He took 11 tablets per day—his breath smelled strongly of vitamin B and his nose would not stop dripping.

What does it mean fall from grace, to slip away from what ought to matter—taking an Uber ride off a cliff and sailing toward the bottom of a canyon where a glistening river runs through the rocks scattered below? The river, the water, has worn the canyon into the earth, turned boulders into gravel and given beautiful fat fish a home, a place for deer to drink, and a brink at the canyon’s edge—a launch pad for bungee jumpers and a step into death for the bereaved.

I stand at the brink bereft of a stretchy cord. I am graceless beyond measure. I can’t cry anymore. I jump. There is a rock ledge 2 feet below the cliff’s edge. I land on it feet first and regain my balance. I climb back up on the cliff. I take one last look and head for my car. It’s a long drive home, and I have a lot to think about.

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

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Anastrophe

Posted on August 14, 2022 | Leave a comment

Anastrophe (an-as’-tro-phee): Departure from normal word order for the sake of emphasis. Anastrophe is most often a synonym for hyperbaton, but is occasionally referred to as a more specific instance of hyperbaton: the changing of the position of only a single word.

Over the hill I went. It wasn’t an upward incline with with a plummet on the other side. Rather, my 80th birthday it was. I was so old I could remember Roosevelt in his last term as President, and then, Harry Truman—“Give ‘em hell Harry!” That was pre-Fox News, when most Americans had a solid grip on America, knew what was good for them, and could tell the difference between a Commie and a Democrat, shit and Shinola. Now they’re eating shit and enjoying it. The “public” has become a collection of inmates incarcerated by lies, misinformation, and basically, a pile of steaming bullshit. Can you imagine trying to get Social Security through Congress in 2022? People in poverty, people living barren lives, elderly hungry Republicans, and nearly everybody who would directly benefit from a monthly paycheck, would protest its passage. Why? Their brains have been fried by FOX News—you can almost smell it when you get close to them. Whatever FOX says is best, is best. There’s no room for critical thinking in their scrambled brains. They would be on the streets with flags and guns, threatening a revolution if the “commies” are allowed to pay benefits made from peoples’ working-life paycheck deductions. Now we know where their unfounded prejudices come from—opinions with no bases, except other unfounded opinions, ad infinitum. Justifications and excuses are layered on myths and because they are uttered by people wearing neckties/bowties who “know what’s really going on” they are adopted. In their conspiracy-laden wasteland, believers echo the echoes, and the echoes echo each other and transform into accepted truths and foundations for action. They become ubiquitous and are confirmed on Fox News—the enemy of America operating in plain view—while, ironically, hiding behind the US Constitution’s Second Amendment: the very document they’d like to see go up in flames, along with books like Thomas Paine’s Common Sense or Rights of Man.

That’s right. Letting FOX News sling their shit, is like having a Nazi News program airing its bullshit on the radio in the 30s. It’s like having Lord Haw-Haw telling us the “Truth.” But anyway, I’m an old man. Over the hill I’ve gone. Like most old people, I am a certified pessimist. When my great-grandson starts goose-stepping around the living room, I’ll probably start up my truck in the garage, with the garage door closed.

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Anesis

Posted on August 13, 2022 | Leave a comment

Anesis (an’-e-sis): Adding a concluding sentence that diminishes the effect of what has been said previously. The opposite of epitasis.

I work in the Cosmic Mirror Factory in Rabbit Drop, Pennsylvania. I think it reflects well on me, except for the horror I’ve experienced in front of the glass. You see, I’m a fog blower—I get one inch away from a newly made mirror and breathe on it, making a small circle of fog indicating the mirror’s viability. If it fogs, I draw a little smiley face in the fog. If it fails to fog, I smash it with a hammer and send the remnants back for recycling. I had to give up smoking to keep the job. My hacking cough kept me from blowing a stream of breath sufficient to fog the mirror. I was 6 months smoke free when it happened.

I was fog blowing a very large mirror that had been made for the lobby of a hotel in Doha. I couldn’t get it to fog and worried about smashing it, given what it had cost to make. I blew one more breath, hoping for it to fog, and it did! But the whole mirror fogged and the fog opened into portal. I stuck my hand into the portal and something grabbed me and pulled me in. When I got to the other side I looked in every direction, and it was a mirror everywhere I looked. But my reflection was not in any of the mirrors. I was invisible. “This is such a cliche,” I said aloud, voice trembling, “What am I, Alice in Wonderland?” The mirrored world briefly turned to clear glass and then it disappeared altogether leaving me in a log cabin on a ridge overlooking a beautiful valley with a wide river flowing through it. I was thirsty, so I hiked down to the river. I cupped my hands and dipped them in the river. Suddenly I was pulled into the river. I became a leaf. I was floating downriver. There was a centipede riding on me. He said his name was Sean and that he worked in a mirror factory in Edinburgh, Scotland and had been pulled through a mirror there 2 weeks ago, incarnating as a centipede when he got here. I was shocked. It was bad enough being some random leaf, but having a talking centipede riding me downriver was more than I could handle. At my first opportunity I would drown myself. Just then, we went over a waterfall at least fifty feet high. Sean fell off the leaf and the wind caught me and blew me ashore.

I awoke, soaking wet on the factory floor. I was holding a small wet maple leaf between my fingers. There was a wet guy standing over me wearing only a tattered kilt. “I’m Sean,” he said, “you saved my life. I hung onto you and let go when we drifted over the riverbank. Now, I’m going to rest under a rock for a few hours, and then, figure out how to get back to Scotland.” I sat there waiting for the next horror saga to hit. But it didn’t—it never did. I had the little maple leaf mounted in a glass shadow box and I keep it in plain view on my mantle. Given the hell I went trough and it’s role in saving me, it should’ve taught me a lesson, but I don’t know what the lesson is supposed to be. I still work for the Cosmic Mirror Factory as a fog blower, but I have vowed never to touch another mirror ever again. Sean has become an entomologist, specializing in the mating habits of centipedes.

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

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Antanaclasis

Posted on August 12, 2022 | Leave a comment

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

It was my room, but it had no room. That’s all I had. It was all I could afford living in New York City. It was like my dorm room in college, only smaller. My bed was the size of a closet door. I had a cube-shaped refrigerator that looked like a black hassock with a door. All my “cooking” was done on a hot plate or in a microwave smaller than my refrigerator. I had one electrical outlet. That’s where I plugged in my appliances. The refrigerator stayed plugged in always. My kettle and microwave changed places when I needed to use one or the other, or to charge my phone at night. I had one chair. It was red and was smeared with different-colored stains from years of use without cleaning. It was a recliner, so I could have a guest visit and stay over night. I had a tray table that I used to eat my meals from, watching movies and scrolling through Instagram on my phone. There was a toilet, a sink and a shower lined up against one wall. The shower was a six-foot high rectangular metal box with a curtain. I had one window overlooking the air shaft and walked up eight floors to get to my little chunk of New York living!

In the past four months I had been gently mugged nine times on my building’s stoop in broad daylight by the same person. I’ve given his description to the police so many times I have dreams about dancing with him at the techno music club around the the corner. My bicycle was stolen when I forgot to bring it up to my apartment, where I kept it hanging from the ceiling. The windows have been broken out of my car twice. Some crazy women keeps jumping out of the alley by my building and yelling at me for not making the child support payments. If she keeps it up, I’ll probably make the payments just to get her off my back. The night before last I saw a homeless man pee on the subway floor, followed by a super-fart that woke a guy up who was sleeping in his seat. He must’ve been a Veteran because he yelled “incoming” and put his head between his knees while the homeless man held out a styrofoam cup and started singing the song about piña coladas.

That did it. I had to get the hell out of NYC before something really bad happened to me—like turning into a paranoid loser, a vigilante, or a cab driver. But then there was Shiela from work. She would sit on my desk and let me look up her dress. I asked her out at least twenty times and she always said “No way!” This morning she was late for work and was not dressed nicely at all. Then, I had the biggest shock of my NYC life: Sheila was the “crazy” women who jumped out of the alley demanding child support payments from me!

That night, l packed my meager belongings. I had heard a song about going to Kansas City on the XM 60s station. It sounded like a pretty cool place. The lyric, “They got some crazy little women there” was a little troublesome. I just had to hope they weren’t as crazy as Shiela. I was going to Kansas City; Kansas City here I come.

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

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Antanagoge

Posted on August 11, 2022 | Leave a comment

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

The oceans are rising. I used have to walk 100 yards to the beach from my summer home. Now, I only walk fifty yards to get to the nature-heated 85 degree ocean. These are the fruits of climate change—nothing bad about a hot ocean and a nearer shore! No more freezing chills up and down your spine when you try to swim. No more trudging to the beach and arriving tired from the trek. Then, there’s the diminishing bug population. What can be bad about that? I haven’t had to scrape a messy Monarch Butterfly off my car’s windshield in years! I remember what a pain in the butt it was—all that yellow goo and shattered orange and black wings. Thank God they’re going the way of the do-do. Then there’s birds. Those damn Passenger pigeons would fly over in the thousands, pooping mercilessly on everything below them. Luckily people loved how they tasted and market hunters with their sky canons blasted them into extinction. The last passenger pigeon was roasted and served with new potatoes, coleslaw, beets, boiled milkweed pods, and a bottle of “Dr. Grunt” a popular carbonated beverage made of sugar and water with a hint of ergot fungus. Finally: no more crap on the roof. But also, no more tasty bird on the table. But you know, nobody wants a crap coated roof. If you have to choose, you go for the roof. When the extinction was reported on the news, all the smart people gave a big “huzza” and started scraping the pigeon crap off their houses.

Instead of making climate change into a problem that needs be be solved, we should look at the positive things it has brought our way. Ten years ago, I was chased by a polar bear when I was minding my own business at the North Pole. These kinds of animals are a menace to humanity—they will eat you for God’s sake! Since I was chased, the Polar Ice Cap has melted a lot, leaving the damn polar bears to float around on breakaway icebergs until they drown. To say this is a bad thing is like saying winning the lotto is a bad thing!

Basically, I say you can shove your white rhino and run over a Darwin’s Fox tonight with your SUV! People are at the top of the food chain. Why treat some damn woodpecker or centipede like it was up there at the top like us? Next thing you know, we’ll be marrying Bambi’s mother or competing for jobs with raccoons! I say, look at the bright side. Just think if the only mammals running around out there were deer, cows, horses, sheep, and pigs. Just think if the only insects were honeybees. Just think if the only birds were chickens, turkeys, and ducks. Just think if the only plants were tomatoes, wheat, rice, corn, clover, and potatoes. Just think. A simple uncomplicated world with honey, duck meat, and cornbread is coming our way, courtesy of climate change. Take a deep breath and if you choke, be grateful. It’s the sound of better things coming. It’s the sound of change.

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

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Antenantiosis

Posted on August 10, 2022 | Leave a comment

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

I can’t believe you’re giving me the Lock and Lord Award for the service I’ve done on behalf of Holy Christ Firearms (HCF). When I first came to work at HCF I was a small self-contained man riven with fear and living in nearly constant anxiety about pooping in my pants on the shop floor. But when it happened, nobody seemed to mind. I was elated that nobody cared, and for the first time in my life, it was ok to poop my pants at work. My adult diaper held the mess from running down my leg, and it’s charcoal filter contained the stink. My colleagues’ selfless acceptance of my health issues made me open my heart, and want to rain down blessings of my own on HCF. My first blessing project, as you all know, was to make an attachment for our Galilee Six Shooter. The attachment makes the revolver into a hammer, a meat tenderizer, a gavel, or a laser pointer—four transformations that versatilitizes the handgun— temporarily turning a “sword” into a “plowshare.” We call the attachment the “Swiss Army Regimenter.” We’ve always heard good things about the Swiss Army, the knives they make, and the Wild uniforms they wear guarding the Vatican. We sent a “Regimenter” to the Pope and he blessed it and put it up for sale at the Vatican’s annual yard sale. Our “Regimenter” landed on a table with a piece of Joan of Arc’s dress, from before she started wearing armor. Next to Joan’s dress was a fragment of a communion wafer that Charlemagne choked on. Finally, there was a glass eye that had belonged to Bishop Fulton Sheen, the first televangelist. We all know he made Billy Graham look like a lost sheep wandering along the Protestant slow lane on the road to heaven. How baaad can it get? Ha ha!

My second blessing project was the “Sinners Around the Corner” rifle. It has a specially bent barrel that shoots around corners. If you’re in a shootout with a sinner, it keeps you out of harm’s way. Since you can’t see what you’re shouting at, there may be the occasional accident, but that is far outweighed by the bent barrel’s around-the-corner safety capability.

Oh darn. I pooped. I have to cut my speech short and go clean up in the men’s room. Let me conclude by saying how undeserving I am of this prestigious award. I am so grateful for your decision and the love that everyone has shown me, especially Ms. Binklo who has literally stood by me despite the gurgling and farting when I’ve had to let one go. Thank you Mindy. Thank you fellow workers. But especially, thank you Holy Christ Firearms—your aim is true.

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

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Anthimeria

Posted on August 9, 2022 | Leave a comment

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

He was a human “Ho-Ho.” I can’t explain it, but every time I saw Milt I started to laugh. Maybe my laughter came from basic meanness or some kind of incongruity between Milt and the way we’re supposed to look, and the way he looked. Milt must’ve dressed in the dark every morning. One day he showed up at work wearing one black polartec slipper and one patent leather dress shoe, red sweat pants, plaid flannel shirt, a blue necktie with a picture of a smiling Jesus on it, and a hat advertising baked beans. Standing there with his Tiger Wood coffee mug, he gave me a big smile and said “Hi Jim.” I tried to return the greeting, but I started uncontrollably sucking in air and my nose started snoffelling and my throat contracted, then, bam, out came a chuckle that turned into a guffaw, that turned into a roaring belly laugh. After it all subsided, I apologized to Milt and started to walk away. “Wait a minute,” he said. He told me he suffered from sartorial dyslexia (SD): an inability to dress right due to a genetically-based chemical imbalance in the part of the brain that processes wardrobe choices. He told me he inherited it, and that family gatherings were like fashion shows without fashion—everything from bathing suits with sports coats, to total nudity with one black Blundstone, and an Apple Watch. I was totally taken by surprise that Milt had a disease that prompted his bizarre clothing choices. I asked him if there was some kind of foundation I could donate to that helps people suffering from SD. He told me the most help I could give was to “Walk in my shoe for a day.”

So, the next morning I dressed in the dark—putting on whatever came to hand, whenever it came to hand. I ended up leaving the house with a Beatle boot on one foot and a penny loafer on the other, blue compression pants, a hunter orange polartec vest, and a navy-blue necktie with ducks on it (neckties were required at work). When I stepped out my door I instantly noticed that people were staring at me, some were laughing and pointing, same were yelling mean taunts—“Where’d you get dressed? In a blender?” That was the rudest. I didn’t even get to the subway before turning around and running with a shoe-induced limp back to my apartment. When I got there, I tore off my clothes and took a shower. I felt so bad for Milt.

I moved in with him and became his “dresser.” I would properly dress him every morning before we went to work. I even went to one of his family gatherings. It was a combination of a mescaline-induced Mardi Gras and a Hieronymus Bosch painting. I loved it! Anyway, we fell in love and got married. Every once-in-awhile, I get dressed in the dark and we drink beer, and we dance around the apartment and laugh.

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

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Anthypophora

Posted on August 8, 2022 | Leave a comment

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

A: Am I the greatest? No. I’m just a little bit above average with a slight hint of genius.

B: What a crockarola! You’re a poster boy for less than average, if that. Is needing help paying the bills “above average with a hint of genius?” No. Is peeing on the toilet seat? No. Is losing the car keys? No. Is forgetting to pick our daughter up at daycare? No. Is spraying the garden with weed killer? No. I could sit here and cite examples of your loserhood all day long. What makes you think you’re “a little above average with a slight hint of genius?” As far as I can see you’re what people call “differently abled” when they’re trying to be kind.

A: Differently abled? No! No way. I guess you’ve forgotten about my giant rubber band ball? It’s bigger than a basketball and I’ve been meticulously adding to it for the past three years. I finished it last week and it looks great on the coffee table in the living room. Admit it.

B: Nope. It looks ridiculous.

A: What about the time I tried out being a nudist and went to the grocery store with no clothes on? I was front page news and was only fined $200.00. People still yell “Nudy Nudy” when they see me downtown. That’s fame. Is there a hint of genius there? Yes! What about the toilet paper holder I made out of a broom? You can’t deny it. Oh—what about when I got lost on our way to Maine and we discovered a whole new country called Canada? Or. . .

B: Ok, you win. You’re everything you say you are. Take your meds and shut up and I’ll turn on Fox News.

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

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