C-WE #3/4/5: The Psychobabble-meister

Written about a week after C-WE #2

Finally, after so many delays, from Take Ten #5-4, "Superwordacious": Blend a given prefix, root, and suffix into a brand new word to use in the story. [The word, as well as the famous first line to start the story (in this case from David Copperfield by Charles Dickens), are in bold.]

Whether I shall turn out to be the hero of my own life, or whether that station will be held by anybody else, these pages must show. But since there's only one page here, I might as well say it right here and now: I am not that hero, and nobody else is either. I am merely a humble, self-contradictory, hypocritical, obscure, and just plain faking-it psychobabblemeister, and I make my living by appearing on talk shows to make weighty-seeming pronouncements on "the human condition" of the pitiful specimens that are my co-guests, which sound really deep and insightful but are actually rubbish and garbage, stuff and nonsense, all carefully screened from the naïve viewer's eye by a choking wall of jargon and, well, psychobabble, that just runs on and on and on and on and never really reaches a stopping place, just keeps on going and rolls over the critical thought of others through the crushing weight of its superior number of words and syllables in those words, sort of like this sentence. You see? I'm doing it to you too (although I'm dropping the jargon since I'm not on my usual subject of choice), without even trying! What can I say, I'm a natural--naturally long-winded, prolix, and generally given to say nothing or next to nothing in an incredibly long string of words, so that any real meaning, true thought, and sensible opinion is buried under a landslide of BS that just goes on and on and on and on and... Sorry, I did it again. As I said, I'm a natural--that's why the networks call so often on my services (that, and they love that kind of stuff; also they're lazy and don't want to spend the effort looking for someone new or better--frankly, though, there is none better than me--when they already have one, i.e. me; notice how even in my parenthetical comments I just ramble on and on into infinity... again I apologize for doing this to you when I'm trying as hard as I can, to tell you meaningful truths about myself. I can't help it, I'm sorry...)
So anyway, the point is--speaking really bluntly for once, which is hard on me and requires incredible amounts of effort and soul-searching and... see, I just can't stop! But I'll make a valiant effort......... Okay, here we go. I am merely a psychobabble-meister for TV talk shows (and radio too, occasionally), not a hero, and nobody wants to be a hero for a psychobabblemeister for TV talk shows, so as I said above (before I got so sidetracked--and it's taking me a huge effort no to go off on another tangent right now)--so anyway, the point is, I have no such thing as the "hero of my life", and it only took me a page (keeping my innate longwinded tendencies in check with supreme effort only) to demonstrate it. There. I've said it. Now I can finally give in to my natural urge and start analyzing the effects of this brief repression of my innate tendencies on my psyche and the devastating pain and autocatalyzing destruction of my soul, and the reasons for everything I do, and the reasons behind those reasons, and the reasons behind those, and how it all connects to my relationship with my mother, and hers with my grandfather, and his with my uncle, and ... ... . . . . . . . .

Note: When I first wrote this, I added an out-of-character, inconsequential, completely useless note at the bottom. I threw it out--and now replace it with this one. But I'll keep it brief. Two things: One, note how I avoid the difficulty of writing beautiful concise prose by making my narrator longwinded... and two, note the coincidence: the author of the famous first line was also known for writing long, complex sentences (and I hope he'd forgive me for the horrible way I treated his line...because I certainly wouldn't have!)
Oh, one more thing I had to say. As I uploaded this, my heart was broken when I had to hyphenate the title (to make it fit the sidebar)--because "psychobabblemeister" doesn't, and should never, repeat NEVER, take a hyphen! The pain you experience when you are forced to bend your erstwhile perfect, carefully constructed creation (so it seems to you, no matter its actual worth) to fit constraints... oh, it's the worst thing in the world, I tell you. The absolute worst. Okay, I'll shut up now.

C-WE #2: Take Us To Your Leaders

Written shortly after C-WE #1

From Take Ten #16-4, "Construction Phrase": Select one word from each of six columns in order to construct a six-word phrase with which to start your story. [The seed phrase used, as well as the selected famous landmark and superhero, are in bold.]

The aliens adamantly demanded cookies with milk after they had been taken to the obligatory leader (in this case the President himself), but this was Cold War II; the Union of Soviet Socialist Republics (plus China) or USSR+C had risen again (on the foundation of the dead bodies of its resisting citizens), was in a state of perpetual distrust and complete lack of negotiation (other than via nuclear warhead), and as it happened, possessed the only glass of milk and plate of cookies left on Planet Earth. Every other set had been requisited for war preparations, and with rationing in effect, no company dared produce them. The only milk&cookies remaining were under quintuple guard in a dour little cube in (and extending under) the Red Square. So how were the aliens going to get their milk&cookies? This was a matter of great importance, as the aliens threatened to destroy the continent they'd crash landed on if their demands weren't met--and who would protect the world from the hideous threat of communism then? Luckily, the the First Lady had a secret identity. Not even her husband knew she was really Wonder Woman, but now she was forced to tell him, and formally requested that she be allowed to search for milk&cookies. The President, knowing full well the location of the only milk&cookies on the planet, and the dangers inherent in their acquisition, tried to dissuade her, but she would not be moved. It was her duty to the United North American States (UNAS), she said, to keep it from being vaporized by alien particle cannons. And so Wonder Woman (aka the First Lady), departed on her epic quest, the details of which are so incredible, intense, and action-packed (not to mention ultra-secret classified) that they cannot be recounted here--not even whether or not she succeeded.

C-WE #1: A Dream

Written February 2, 2012

From Take Ten #2-8, "Out Cold": When the ball hit you in the head, you were knocked out cold for ten minutes. During that time, you had what you can best describe as the weirdest dream of your life. [The seed phrases are italicized here.]

I was in the Yellow Submarine, and the Beatles were serenading me with a calculus exam. (I don't know how but it all made sense while I was dreaming.) There was a potted venus flytrap looking rather out of place on the ivory grand piano (which took up most of the space apart from the drumset). The music was off-key and completely out of whack (what does a math test sound like after all), and I got lost trying to solve the problems. Then the submarine went out of town on route I-90, and although I was inside the submarine with the Beatles and the piano and the musical exam, and there were no windows, I could see all the purple cars passing us on the left-hand side, more like ghostly violet smears. The sun was shining brightly until it got mysteriously dim, and pretty soon it was dark and the Beatles were singing weird and unearthly tunes that grated on my ear. Then their songs turned into shouting, and then I woke up to see everyone yelling at me to "WAKE UP, ALREADY! We want to get back to playing!"

After writing this, I added this irrelevant postscript for reasons I now cannot fathom...for completeness I include it here:

I'm done, because the parts of my dream that took half a minute to write actually took several to experience, and so I wrote 10 min of dream in less time than that.
And it's too late to add anything because I already ended the dream, and I can't go back and edit!

What was I THINKING?! (Probably nothing.)

C-WE #7. Favorite Rhetorical Techniques

Written February 12, 2012

From my own head, uploaded way late and overedited:
A list of my favorite 7 (or so) rhetorical techniques

1. Paraprosdokian: setting up an "obvious," often clichéd, phrase or situation, then adding an unexpected surprise twist. E.g. Groucho Marx's "I once shot an elephant in my pajamas. How he got in my pajamas I'll never know."
2. Irony: My provisional version of the (often misunderstood) definition of irony is an unexpected reversal between expectation and reality. The Wikipedia article I referenced to check says that in an ironic situation "actions taken have an effect exactly opposite from what was intended." E.g. (again stealing shamelessly from Wikipedia) "being shot by one's own gun."
• That was situational irony, irony in events; irony can also be used for rhetorical effect. In that context, irony involves consistently and intentionally asserting the opposite of one's true beliefs.
• Related are sarcasm (irony's ignoble cousin) as well as satire:  commentary on the human condition, usually filled to bursting with deadpan ironic delivery; exemplified by Swift's Modest Proposal.
3. Litotes: intentional understatement. Works well with irony; very enjoyable to use; shades into euphemism if employed only to deceive or spin.
4. Parallel structure: many subspecies; among them chiasmus (a-b-b-a format); anadiplosis (starting a phrase with the word(s) used to end the previous one; anaphora (starting several phrases with the same word/phrase); and epistrophe (ending several phrases with the same word/phrase). Repetition, especially when it involves twisting the sentence structure just enough but not too much, is an excellent attention grabber.
5. Hypallage: another one of the techniques (with apostrophe and paraprosdokian) I presented on in AP Lang & Comp; really cool, when you know it's there. It's the transfer of adjectives from the usual subject to a more unlikely (or convenient) one; examples include "drunk driving" (the driving isn't drunk, the driver is, but "a drunk driver driving" is cumbersome) and "the winged sound of whirling" (from Classical Greek; replaces "the sound of whirling wings"!).
6. Asyndeton: a very popular device; leaving out the "and" in a list. This creates an unusual but powerful effect by removing the emphasis on the last element. Rather than saying "something weird, wild, and wonderful," put all qualities on equal footing by saying "something weird, wild, wonderful." Ah! What a difference.
7. Polysyndeton: Asyndeton's evil twin brother. Rather than taking the "and" out of the list, add "and" between every element. Produces a sensation of relentless and unceasing flow: "He ran and jumped and shouted and laughed and cried and ate and slept."

C-WE #6. Missing Chair

From The Pocket Muse: A character arrives at work to find her chair missing. What happened to it?

Ms. Grace entered her cubicle, looked at her coworkers as usual, booted up her computer as usual, straightened her hair as usual, and sat down as usual, all without looking. This was unfortunate, as her chair was no longer there, and she ended up on the floor, rather a harder landing than expected, which caused her to emit a loud whoop. After gathering up the few remaining scattered fragments of her shattered dignity, she stood up, called out to the entire room, "Where Is My Chair?!" (literally in title case), and promptly fell out of the center of attention as everyone speculated on the chair's mysterious vanishment.
"Maybe it fell into a miniature black hole which closed up immediately after it and transported it to another dimension," guessed Mr. Roberts.
"No way, Occam's razor cuts that to shreds. What obviously happened is that it was eaten by beavers," rejoined Mrs. Lane.
"Are you crazy? That chair wasn't even made of wood! How the heck would beavers have eaten a metal and plastic chair--and where would they go afterwards?" Mr. Roberts said heatedly, angry at the dismissal of his theory.
"It still makes a lot more sense than your stupid black hole," Mrs. Lane responded, and would have started a fight but Mr. Johnson got in the way.
"There's no need for fighting--you're both wrong," he advised them. "Obviously, the chair grew legs and ran away."
"That's just nonsense," said Mrs. Lane and Mr. Roberts in unison. Surprised by their agreement, they stopped, stunned, and never reentered the discussion, too amazed to speak further.
Mrs. Samuel had something to say though. "Chairs don't grow legs, you fool!" she yelled at Mr. Johnson. "Obviously someone here took it!"
Awkward silence. Everyone looked at everyone else (except Mrs. Lane and Mr. Roberts, who were still completely out of it). Then Mr. Johnson spoke up. "Rubbish! I never heard anything so stupid in my entire life! The chair grew legs, I know it, I can see it--well, in my mind I can. Any other explanation is bunkum!"
And with that the discussion began again, louder and more heated than ever (except, of course, for Mrs. Lane and Mr. Roberts, who were still staring at each other). Everyone was shouting, violence was threatening, the room was disintegrating into chaos...then Mr. Johnson (looking for support for his legs theory) asked Johnny, who inhabited the cubicle in the corner, what he thought. "You haven't said anything yet. What's your idea?"
"I don't have one," the boy replied into the general lull. "Although I think your idea is the best."
"You see, you see??!" shouted Mr. Johnson, and the fighting started right back up again.
Meanwhile, Johnny remained sitting quietly in his cubicle. He was the only one who hadn't stood up at the beginning of the dispute--and with good reason: he was sitting on Ms. Grace's chair.