Likeness

"Speaking generally, we may say that the rhetorical function is the function of adjusting ideas to people and of people to ideas."
-- Donald Bryant, "Rhetoric: Its Scope and Function," Quarterly Journal of Speech, 39, 413.

"God has prepared the whole world for the gospel and the gospel for the whole world."
-- Don Richardson, in Answering Jewish Objections to Jesus, 4, 172.

Loo

It's a grim sign that I have to haul out the cliché hammer again this quickly, but I have no choice. I am mortally sick and tired of hearing about "kitchen table decisions." To every single official and spokesperson belonging to the Obama administration I beg you, for Heaven's sake, knock it off. At the kitchen table, I don't decide; I chew. Chase down a herd of cows and watch them go to town on their cud if you think a flood of brilliant plans comes out of chewing. In all honesty, I make a fair share of my important decisions on the crapper, but don't hold your breath to hear that in an Obama speech anytime soon.

Litter

By the power vested in me as a professor of rhetoric, I hereby put the world on notice that I do not have a "radar screen." If you've confused me with an aircraft carrier, get glasses. I have five perfectly good senses, and occasional twitchings of a sixth, but I do not sweep a beam of electromagnetic radiation round and round for the purpose of identifying the range, altitude, direction, or speed of both moving and fixed objects. That would be rude. Plus, I'd have to do some sort of Regan MacNeil trick with my head, which would hurt. On first usage, this metaphor might've been vivid; on second, it might've been tolerable. By now, it's been beaten past death into unrecognizable corpse pulp, and it stinks up far too many conversations.

Please be advised: I have declared the entire world around me a no-fly zone. If you put something on my radar screen, I reserve the right to pick it off with a Sidewinder.

Logic

I spent enough years in debate that I judge arguments just as much on entertainment value as quality of reasoning. Today I was treated to a real delight: Rush Limbaugh says the Haiti earthquake was made to order for the Obama administration, and Pat Robertson says it was sent by God. If both those claims are true, then obviously God must be a Democrat!