The devil and I

Sometimes when we have a great desire to go to a special place or do something we think would be special, we get ourselves into a great deal of trouble or at least the experience does not turn out the way we had hoped. I once tried to improve my writing by going to a writing work shop . I signed up for the following class. Writing 666 "Rhetoric" On the first day the wily old horned goat said to me, "Why are you here?" I replied, "I want to learn how to write. I want to be a great writer". Good, he said, "show me some of your...... Allusion, Alliteration, Amplification, Anacoluthon, Anadiplosis, and Analogy" Damn, I relied, I did not come here to learn magic, I want to be a writer. OK, he said as he got a little redder in the face, " Show me some..... Anaphora, Antanagoge, Antimetabole, Antiphrasis, Antithesis, and Apophasis" I replied. "I do not like scrabble, I only want to write." His eyes bulged and his voice got louder as he said , "Yes but I need to see something in Aporoia, Aposiopesis, Apostrophe, Appositive, Assonance, and Asendeton" Trivia is a game for nerds, I replied. I am serious about writing. His eyes got bigger, his horns grew longer but he took a deep breath and said, "If you are really serious at least demonstrate Catachresis, Chiasmus, Climax, Conduplicatio, Diacope, and Dirimens Copulatio" Now my eyes got bigger and my face grew red, Damn I said, "I may be able to do something with Climax and Copulatio, they both sound familiar." I thought he was going to choke on his tongue. He spat back at me, "Do not be crude, to write you need be able to Distinctio, Enthymeme, Enumeratio, Epanalepsis, Epistrophe, and Epithet" Cowering, I replied "But these, whatever they are, are not even in spell check "Spell Check?, he spewed, screw spell check. I am not teaching spell check, I am teaching Rhetoric. If you want to write your readers must hear Epizeuxis, Eponym, Exemplum, Expletive, Hyperbaton, and Hyperbole Don't be crude, I whimpered, I just want to write simple prose without using foul language. His tongue forked out at me and his mouth spewed fire, "Yes, but to write Prose, even simply, you must use Hypophora, Hypotaxis, Litotes, Metabasis, Metanioia,and Metaphor" OK, I replied "I know metaphor. I'll Metaphor." Now he was really mad. "Are you a total idiot, a complete moron"? "That is to simple. Good writing requires Metonymy, Onomatopoeia, Oxymoron, Parallelism, Parataxis, and Personification." I felt better, I finally recognized some of the words he was using, I said with a deep sigh of relief, "Now were getting somewhere. I can Personify an Oxymoron Parallelism and California has taught me a lot about Parataxis" He drooled and he blubbered as he said, "Do not be trite. In this class we require Paranthesis, Pleonasm, Polesyndeton, Procatalepsis, Rhetorical Question, and Scesis Onomation." Now I was totally lost and I got smart with him. "Now you are getting trite", I sassed. "you cannot be serious...Scesis Onomation? Your are, of course, joking. He nearly choked on his tongue as he gurgled, "Do not get smart with me you little imp. If you want me to help you, come up with some Sententia, Simile, Simploce, Synecdoche, Understatement, and Zeugma." I was really frustrated and I said, "I've got a great Understatement for you" "Good," he said, "let me hear it." I picked up my journal and said very quietly, "You can take your class and your rhetoric and go straight back down to hell." "The devil made me do it"