16 July 2008

Acceleration

On the recommendation of a friend, I picked up a great read. It’s a handbook of rhetorical terms, mostly in anglo'd Greek. It’s going to aid me in my quest to become an even more semantic emm-eff. And I’m thinking about structuring my Rhetoric classes around it. Each day we’ll dig on a new word and, like a gaggle of untrained jazz musicians, riff on it in a most high-context, loosely associative fashion like we’re all high on tea. I dunno if this would actually “work,” but then again I think it probably would.

The word metanoia is in there. In the context of rhetoric, though, metanoia means, “redefinition,” “backtracking,” and/or such and so on. I like that the Greeks invented rhetoric. Of course, they got it all from Indian philosophy and discourse. But it’s cool because Greek words make you sound hipper. “I hate to tell you this, Bob. But I might have to engage your claims with a bit of casual metanoia. You see, Krispy Kremes aren’t merely the best doughnut. They’re the only doughnut. So you can keep your tired-ass Munchkins and get the hell on.” Yup, nothing like a little Romanized Greek to bring out the Socrates in us all...

Anyway, today I shall attempt to register for classes with the Writer’s Workshop. I tried to once already today, but when nobody answered the telephone, I checked the time and realized that it was only 6:15 a.m. “Slackers,” said I, and got back to reading “Runaway Bunny” to EB. Tomorrow we head out for another weekend adventure…this time to my in-laws’ lake house south of Champagne-Urbana, where frivolity lays in wait like a Krispy Kreme doughnut in a microwave oven. So, anyway, today is all about tending to some gentle wolves of minutiae before we leave town. (Time is accelerating now, you see.)

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