Figures of Speech Served Fresh

Quote:  "Show us a magazine without a signature drink, and we’ll show you an uptight staff without priorities." Martha Stewart’s new magazine.

Figure of Speech:  exergasia (ex-er-GAS-ia), the restatement.

Martha has just launched Blueprint: Design Your Life, a magazine for youngish women who have not yet learned the fulfilling art of practicing origami on dinner napkins.

The editors even invented their own drink, the Blueprint Martini.  To defend their alcohol-enhanced joie de vivre, they use an exergasia ("workout"), a figure that restates a thought in different words.  It’s a great way of defining an issue directly: this means that.

However, the magazine’s name offends Figaro.  It makes obnoxious use of this year’s trendy punctuation mark: the colon.  Besides, as Plato once said (more or less):  "Don’t design your life.  Examine it."

We suggest the entire staff submit to a colonoscopy.

Snappy Answer:  "So your priority is getting plastered?"