Actor: A person who might to be shopping for a personality, but appears to be trying everything on first.
Advice: A thing which is frequently necessary, but only potentially useful. One only fully understands how to use advice once it is no longer needed.
Artist: A person with two jobs, one calling, and no career.
Artistic Integrity: A phrase commonly used when discussing creative works intended to appeal to their authors rather than their audiences.
Astronomy: A field of study whose adherents endeavor to deduce the nature of our world by observing the objects furthest from it.
Attorney-Client Privilege: The sacred bond of trust that exists between a slimy scumbag of a lawyer and his scumbag criminal of a client.
Authoritarian: A political, leadership, and parenting philosophy whose central tenet is that you need to respect my decisions about how to live your life.
Avocation: That which makes breathing worth the trouble.
Awkward: An adjective which denotes the inability to decide whether something is humorous or regrettable.
Bachelor: A machine that uses chemical processes to turn potato chips into excrement.
Bar: A place people go to lie together before they lie together.
Baseball: In the eyes of someone who truly knows the game, baseball is a lifelong passion that produces pleasure and pain, inspires prose and poetry, demands art and drudgery, encompasses alchemy and science, and even informs life and death. In the eyes of someone indifferent, baseball is a child's pastime, chiefly concerning the act of hitting a piece of horsehide with a stick. In the eyes of someone indifferent but observant and mathematically inclined, baseball is a child's pastime, chiefly concerning the act of failing to hit a piece of horsehide with a stick.
Beer: A food in the grain family; generally accompanies pizza at breakfast.
Biology: The study of how dead things lived.
Birth: The preliminary stage of death.
Blogger: A person secure in his or her opinion who has yet to secure the interest of a publisher.
Book: An archaic precursor to the computer.
Butter: Oil + Indecision
Cancer: A family of over 200 unique diseases. Collectively, cancers can cause almost any imaginable symptom and be linked to almost any imaginable cause. People who talk about "a cure for cancer" are guilty of underestimating cancer. It is safe to assume that anything that is worth doing, and much that isn't, causes cancer.
Car: A vaguely mobile wheeled bedroom. An unenlightened society's miserable and inefficient replacement for public transport, motorcycles, light trucks, and a room near the back entrance of a no-tell motel.
Cellular Phone: An Elderitch Abomination. A reflection of all of the most horrible aspects of human nature, culture, and behavior, from mindless suggestibility to hive social structure to participation in fashion trends.
Checkout Line: The bizarre, widespread practice of spending long periods of time waiting for the privilege of giving a rich person more money. Once thought to be obsolete with the invention of the self-checkout machine, this is not the case, as people now line up to use those.
Church: A psychiatric practice that is either by far the most generalized of its kind, or a specialist in shared delusions.
Cleaning: A custom of spending thousands of hours on labors which are often unnecessary, usually for the sake of appearances, and inevitably undone shortly following their completion, only to be redone. Though the more mainstream translations are quite misleading on this point, it has recently come to light that cleaning was the true punishment of Sisyphus, who was appointed as the underworld's janitor.
Communism: Taking everything from everybody to ensure that everyone has anything a person needs. See also: Fascism
Commute: The one part of the workday that, for many people, might actually be worse than work. For motorcyclists, this essentially functions as a mandatory joyride.
Conformity: A social convenience achieved at great personal inconvenience.
Cognitive Dissonance: The presence of irony in one's personality. Also, a possible explanation for hipsters.
Consensus: That which is not preferred by anyone, and thus accepted by everyone.
Conventional Wisdom: That which is believed to be true because it is believed to be true.
Crass: The way Donald Trump talks about women.
Crisis: An opportunity that arises from one or more mistakes. Typically, it serves mostly as an opportunity to make more and better mistakes.
Critic: One who can neither do, nor teach.
Cult of Personality: Conflating the success of one person with the success of the whole nation. See also: Fascism
Culture: An invisible fence composed of unspoken rules and created without consideration, by mass consensus.
Democrat: A voter or politician who believes that the way to improve the lives of Americans is to disregard any ideas, opinions, or people that don't come from a large coastal city, but raise taxes for everyone, everywhere.
Democratic Republic: A system of government in which a populace selects its leaders on the basis of whose lies it prefers.
Dictionary: A collection and elucidation of words. A proper dictionary is longer and more direct than this one.
Doctor: An instrument of profit employed by insurance companies.
Dog: An animal that seeks to make a vice of humanity's rarest virtues.
Downshifty: A person who merely seems to be following you is shifty, but when you slow down, and they slow down to match your speed or ensure a "coincidental" meeting, then they are downshifty.
Dust: The editor of this dictionary has the good sense to consider this word a noun only, and not a verb.
Eccentricity: The ability to do the regular, unusually.
Economics: What you get when you take everything sexy out of sex.
Emotion: A word used to describe the human experience of animal instinct.
Plan: A detailed articulation of one thing you can be certain isn't going to happen.
Critic: One who can neither do, nor teach.
Cult of Personality: Conflating the success of one person with the success of the whole nation. See also: Fascism
Democrat: A voter or politician who believes that the way to improve the lives of Americans is to disregard any ideas, opinions, or people that don't come from a large coastal city, but raise taxes for everyone, everywhere.
Democratic Republic: A system of government in which a populace selects its leaders on the basis of whose lies it prefers.
Dictionary: A collection and elucidation of words. A proper dictionary is longer and more direct than this one.
Doctor: An instrument of profit employed by insurance companies.
Dog: An animal that seeks to make a vice of humanity's rarest virtues.
Downshifty: A person who merely seems to be following you is shifty, but when you slow down, and they slow down to match your speed or ensure a "coincidental" meeting, then they are downshifty.
Dust: The editor of this dictionary has the good sense to consider this word a noun only, and not a verb.
Economics: What you get when you take everything sexy out of sex.
Emotion: A word used to describe the human experience of animal instinct.
Employment: A state of misery.
English: A language with at least nineteen different words for "rain," invented by the British. It's still better than their food.
etc.: Short for the Latin "et cetera," this concise and convenient abbreviation serves to express that my desire to appear educated outstrips my willingness to fully educate myself.
Euphemism: Cowardice in linguistic form.
Evolution: The idea that life in the present is a direct result of death in the past, on a truly horrifying scale.
Executive: A false prophet, gifted with "executive vision." Executives have visions, and then everyone else has nightmares.
Experience: Something acquired largely because we didn't have it when we really needed it.
Expletive: A word that can mean anything and be used anywhere, thus rendering it useless and meaningless.
English: A language with at least nineteen different words for "rain," invented by the British. It's still better than their food.
etc.: Short for the Latin "et cetera," this concise and convenient abbreviation serves to express that my desire to appear educated outstrips my willingness to fully educate myself.
Euphemism: Cowardice in linguistic form.
Evolution: The idea that life in the present is a direct result of death in the past, on a truly horrifying scale.
Executive: A false prophet, gifted with "executive vision." Executives have visions, and then everyone else has nightmares.
Experience: Something acquired largely because we didn't have it when we really needed it.
Expletive: A word that can mean anything and be used anywhere, thus rendering it useless and meaningless.
Extrovert: A person who uses speech as a substitute for thought.
Eye: An instrument of self-deception, second only to the brain.
Facebook: Twitter with leather seats and heated cupholders.
Fascism: The power to make and enforce rules that are impossible to follow in practical reality. See also: Cult of Personality
Fashion: A complex system of cultural prejudices codified by second-rate artists doing jobs for which fourth-rate engineers would be better suited. Western fashion appears to have been organized around the philosophical values of impracticality and discomfort, though it would require study by a native of an uncontacted tribal culture to be certain.
Fatigue(s): This word describes both an article of military dress and a condition to which its wearers quickly become habituated.
Finance: A lucrative profession concerned with creating bogus profits and paper loses by buying and selling things that do not exist in the real world.
Eye: An instrument of self-deception, second only to the brain.
Facebook: Twitter with leather seats and heated cupholders.
Fascism: The power to make and enforce rules that are impossible to follow in practical reality. See also: Cult of Personality
Fashion: A complex system of cultural prejudices codified by second-rate artists doing jobs for which fourth-rate engineers would be better suited. Western fashion appears to have been organized around the philosophical values of impracticality and discomfort, though it would require study by a native of an uncontacted tribal culture to be certain.
Fatigue(s): This word describes both an article of military dress and a condition to which its wearers quickly become habituated.
Finance: A lucrative profession concerned with creating bogus profits and paper loses by buying and selling things that do not exist in the real world.
Fired: A word that denotes being granted an immense degree of freedom, against one's will.
Fleek: This word is used to express approval, despite sounding like it could be the name of something gross that you might find at the bottom of your shoe.
Florida: Retirees, rednecks, and a swamp, coated with Disney to attract grandchildren. The swamp is worth seeing.
Food: Humanity's partner in a long term relationship that only recently became unhealthy, tending alternately toward abuse and neglect.
Fraud: Robbing a bank with a toy gun.
Freedom: In theory, the right to select the objects and activities which one likes the most; in practice, the privilege of selecting the actions and possessions which one dislikes the least.
Freedom of Speech: A liberty which everyone agrees is an absolute necessity to maintain a decent civilization--until they hear words with which they disagree.
French: A language in which profanity sounds like poetry. It's still grittier than its inventors.
Friend: In theory, someone whose loyalty is without price, regardless of cost. In practice, someone who will not go to war for you, but who might go to the drugstore, if it's on the way and you only need a couple of things.
German: A language in which poetry sounds like profanity, spoken by the ancestral enemies of the French.
Google+: The Pepsi-Cola to Facebook's Coca-Cola...or perhaps the Shasta Cola to Facebook's Coca-Cola.
Government: An extraordinarily unpopular professional association of people whose careers are centrally concerned with winning popularity contests.
Heavy Metal: A genre of rock music. Its performers are easily distinguished by their steadfast refusal to engage in any healthful behavior other than weight-bearing exercise.
Hell: A place of physical and mental torment. If God exists, Hell is where bad tippers go when they die. If God does not exist, then Hell is a universe in which there exists no God to punish bad tippers.
History: The study of our ancestors' virtues and other peoples' misery.
Human Nature: Things that people do because they want to.
Human Thought: An impossibly complex biological process that can be easily replicated by speed-reading a James Joyce novel.
Humility: A social strategy practiced by the vain and insecure, for the purpose of temporarily becoming the subject of praise, thereby achieving a temporary sense of affirmation.
Ignorance: A product of, and requirement for, politics. The system doesn't work if voters know enough to disbelieve both sides.
Insanity: The inability to think as prescribed by modern human culture. See also: Insight.
Insight: Thinking proscribed by modern human culture. See also: Insanity.
Intelligent Design: The idea that something as ridiculous and impractical as the human knee was invented by an all-knowing and all-loving creator, presumably either to humble us or increase the number of interesting trades and waiver claims in our fantasy football leagues.
Introvert: A person for whom social activity and the lack thereof are equally unhealthy.
Irony: A word whose definition has been undone by decades of argument. The fact that the argument now primarily centers on whether the word applies to a middling pop song from more than twenty years ago may or may not be ironic.
Job Opening: A phrase always accompanied by "experience required" or "experience preferred."
Latin: A dead language, spoken only byPapist spies clergy and necromancers scientists.
Lawn Care: A paradoxical pursuit in which people attempt simultaneously to husband and halt the growth of plants on their property. Lawn care, as most labor-intensive activities in our society, it is done almost entirely for the sake of appearances.
Lawyer: Someone who knows six different ways of saying things he may not mean and probably doesn't believe.
Libertarian: A deviant political philosophy which holds that the very best sort of political compromise is agreeing not to pass more laws.
Life: An awkward situation; Something that is just passing through water; Something that is bad for you, but better than the alternatives; A series of bad jokes, punctuated by emotional outbursts.
Living: An activity best done by the odd, the talented, the poetic, and the sarcastic.
Lost Wages: An economist's word for recovered time.
Love: An outdated, colloquial term for oneitis; this term is most frequently used by its sufferers. In poets, "love" may also refer to twoitis or threeitis.
Fleek: This word is used to express approval, despite sounding like it could be the name of something gross that you might find at the bottom of your shoe.
Florida: Retirees, rednecks, and a swamp, coated with Disney to attract grandchildren. The swamp is worth seeing.
Food: Humanity's partner in a long term relationship that only recently became unhealthy, tending alternately toward abuse and neglect.
Fraud: Robbing a bank with a toy gun.
Freedom: In theory, the right to select the objects and activities which one likes the most; in practice, the privilege of selecting the actions and possessions which one dislikes the least.
Freedom of Speech: A liberty which everyone agrees is an absolute necessity to maintain a decent civilization--until they hear words with which they disagree.
French: A language in which profanity sounds like poetry. It's still grittier than its inventors.
Friend: In theory, someone whose loyalty is without price, regardless of cost. In practice, someone who will not go to war for you, but who might go to the drugstore, if it's on the way and you only need a couple of things.
German: A language in which poetry sounds like profanity, spoken by the ancestral enemies of the French.
Google+: The Pepsi-Cola to Facebook's Coca-Cola...or perhaps the Shasta Cola to Facebook's Coca-Cola.
Government: An extraordinarily unpopular professional association of people whose careers are centrally concerned with winning popularity contests.
Heavy Metal: A genre of rock music. Its performers are easily distinguished by their steadfast refusal to engage in any healthful behavior other than weight-bearing exercise.
Hell: A place of physical and mental torment. If God exists, Hell is where bad tippers go when they die. If God does not exist, then Hell is a universe in which there exists no God to punish bad tippers.
History: The study of our ancestors' virtues and other peoples' misery.
Human Nature: Things that people do because they want to.
Human Thought: An impossibly complex biological process that can be easily replicated by speed-reading a James Joyce novel.
Humility: A social strategy practiced by the vain and insecure, for the purpose of temporarily becoming the subject of praise, thereby achieving a temporary sense of affirmation.
Ignorance: A product of, and requirement for, politics. The system doesn't work if voters know enough to disbelieve both sides.
Insight: Thinking proscribed by modern human culture. See also: Insanity.
Intelligent Design: The idea that something as ridiculous and impractical as the human knee was invented by an all-knowing and all-loving creator, presumably either to humble us or increase the number of interesting trades and waiver claims in our fantasy football leagues.
Introvert: A person for whom social activity and the lack thereof are equally unhealthy.
Irony: A word whose definition has been undone by decades of argument. The fact that the argument now primarily centers on whether the word applies to a middling pop song from more than twenty years ago may or may not be ironic.
Job Opening: A phrase always accompanied by "experience required" or "experience preferred."
Latin: A dead language, spoken only by
Lawn Care: A paradoxical pursuit in which people attempt simultaneously to husband and halt the growth of plants on their property. Lawn care, as most labor-intensive activities in our society, it is done almost entirely for the sake of appearances.
Libertarian: A deviant political philosophy which holds that the very best sort of political compromise is agreeing not to pass more laws.
Life: An awkward situation; Something that is just passing through water; Something that is bad for you, but better than the alternatives; A series of bad jokes, punctuated by emotional outbursts.
Living: An activity best done by the odd, the talented, the poetic, and the sarcastic.
Lost Wages: An economist's word for recovered time.
Love: An outdated, colloquial term for oneitis; this term is most frequently used by its sufferers. In poets, "love" may also refer to twoitis or threeitis.
Magician's Assistant: A magician who has fooled the audience into thinking that she's not a magician.
Majority: More than half of the people. If you find yourself agreeing with them, it's time to reexamine your beliefs.
Man: A type of person who is frequently deceived by appearances.
Majority: More than half of the people. If you find yourself agreeing with them, it's time to reexamine your beliefs.
Management: A type of people who see themselves as ownership, but whom ownership sees as labor.
Marijuanabe: (or Mari-wannabe or Mary-wannabe): A braggart, a try-hard, a Miles Gloriosus among ordinary stoners.
Marriage: An affliction of the body and mind. Effects include isolation, desperation, sexual frustration, alcohol consumption, inability to communicate, and in extreme cases, physical violence or childbirth. Due to advances in modern medicine, many cases of marriage do not end in death.
Materialism: The dominant ethical system in the United States. Materialism, as a moral philosophy, holds that people can be judged, and their value appraised, based upon their possessions rather than their actions, aptitudes, or nature as human beings.
Mind: A non-Newtonian fluid, the mind parts easily for influence but quickly hardens against change.
Misanthrope: One with an unhealthy, misunderstood mind of his own, under the influence of a healthy understanding of the minds of others. An equal-opportunity hater.
Miscogynation: To knowingly and willfully engage in carnal relations with a dumb, sexist bigot stuck in the dark ages.
Misery: That which is only amusing in hindsight.
Money: A convenient invention, for which we perpetually inconvenience ourselves.
Mosquito: In the global North, the third or fourth most irritating feature of the summer season; in the global South, a merciless mass-murderer with a taste for fruit.
Marijuanabe: (or Mari-wannabe or Mary-wannabe): A braggart, a try-hard, a Miles Gloriosus among ordinary stoners.
Marriage: An affliction of the body and mind. Effects include isolation, desperation, sexual frustration, alcohol consumption, inability to communicate, and in extreme cases, physical violence or childbirth. Due to advances in modern medicine, many cases of marriage do not end in death.
Materialism: The dominant ethical system in the United States. Materialism, as a moral philosophy, holds that people can be judged, and their value appraised, based upon their possessions rather than their actions, aptitudes, or nature as human beings.
Mind: A non-Newtonian fluid, the mind parts easily for influence but quickly hardens against change.
Misanthrope: One with an unhealthy, misunderstood mind of his own, under the influence of a healthy understanding of the minds of others. An equal-opportunity hater.
Miscogynation: To knowingly and willfully engage in carnal relations with a dumb, sexist bigot stuck in the dark ages.
Misery: That which is only amusing in hindsight.
Money: A convenient invention, for which we perpetually inconvenience ourselves.
Mosquito: In the global North, the third or fourth most irritating feature of the summer season; in the global South, a merciless mass-murderer with a taste for fruit.
Motorcycle: A form of transport that God truly loves us and wants us to be happy. And also that he wants us to be more tolerant of pain and less fearful of our inevitable demise.
Myspace: An archaic precursor to Facebook.
Nonconformity: A social inconvenience achieved at great personal inconvenience.
Obesity: An unshakable personal faith in the theory that too much of a good thing is a good thing, accompanied by the willingness to test that theory in practice.
Myspace: An archaic precursor to Facebook.
Nonconformity: A social inconvenience achieved at great personal inconvenience.
Obesity: An unshakable personal faith in the theory that too much of a good thing is a good thing, accompanied by the willingness to test that theory in practice.
Optimist: A person who sees remote possibilities as utter certainties.
Oxygen: A reactive element often found in diatomic molecules in a gaseous state. Water is also nearly 90% oxygen by weight. Those who say "love conquers all" or "all you need is love" are guilty of underrating oxygen.
Parenthood: Voluntarily surrendering the privileged position of "target audience."
Peace: A temporary period of no fighting, enforced by superior strength.
People's Republic: A place where neither the people nor their votes have any power.
Performance Enhancing Drugs: Viagra, Cialis, etc.
Personality: The sum of the mistakes that a person acknowledges a pattern of making and continues to make anyway.
Oxygen: A reactive element often found in diatomic molecules in a gaseous state. Water is also nearly 90% oxygen by weight. Those who say "love conquers all" or "all you need is love" are guilty of underrating oxygen.
Parenthood: Voluntarily surrendering the privileged position of "target audience."
Peace: A temporary period of no fighting, enforced by superior strength.
People's Republic: A place where neither the people nor their votes have any power.
Performance Enhancing Drugs: Viagra, Cialis, etc.
Personality: The sum of the mistakes that a person acknowledges a pattern of making and continues to make anyway.
Pessimist: A person who sees the world almost as it is. Pessimists are handicapped by the fact that it can often take the imagination of a creative virtuoso to truly expect the worst, but they put forth a valiant effort and do an admirable job trying.
Plan: A detailed articulation of one thing you can be certain isn't going to happen.
Planter Fascistitis: The mental condition that causes people to sympathize with the defunct Confederate States of Amerca.
Poet: Someone who thinks in metaphor and speaks in riddles. See also: Artist, Writer.
Polar Bear: One of the two animals known to science that becomes increasingly tan as temperatures rise.
Political Correctness: A system of censorship that works by encouraging people, in the most opaque, circuitous, niggling, nitpicking, and inflexible manner possible, to be nice to each other. Political correctness was invented by the political left in the 1990s, with the purpose of infuriating free speech advocates and the political right twenty years in the future.
Political Machine: An apparatus that produces fruit for its operators, grist for historians, and misery for everyone else. Only two such machines, located on Capitol and First streets in Washington, DC, are still in operation.
Political Party: In theory, a group of like-minded people pooling their resources and influence in order to achieve policy goals. In practice, either a self-perpetuating entity that seeks only to increase its own power, or a group of like-minded but ultimately irrelevant people pooling their resources and lack of influence in order to fail to achieve policy goals. The names of political parties are sometimes used as pejoratives, which is evidence that people sometimes have the right idea about them.
Politician: Someone who works hard for themoney votes. Politicians have a miraculous gift for determining what ought and ought not to be done. If two or more politicians are found to agree upon any given course of action, you can be certain that it is a terrible idea.
Politics: A tool of demolition which people have, continually and misguidedly, attempted to use as a tool of repair. Politics cannot fix anything, only decide how things will be broken.
Poverty: A condition which, according to some, can be cured by working harder. According to others, this condition only exists in the first place because those who say "you just need to work harder" are too lazy to do anything about it. In theory, both groups are correct. In practice, poverty seems to be a condition without cause or cure, as neither have been successfully isolated or demonstrated in the real world.
Pregnancy: A common form of parasitism, as vital and natural as any other.
Principle of Occam's Razor, The: The science of saving money on medicine and medical care by dismissing all physical ailments as "old football injury" and "something I ate."
Progress: The story of privileges being gradually turned into rights.
Poet: Someone who thinks in metaphor and speaks in riddles. See also: Artist, Writer.
Polar Bear: One of the two animals known to science that becomes increasingly tan as temperatures rise.
Political Correctness: A system of censorship that works by encouraging people, in the most opaque, circuitous, niggling, nitpicking, and inflexible manner possible, to be nice to each other. Political correctness was invented by the political left in the 1990s, with the purpose of infuriating free speech advocates and the political right twenty years in the future.
Political Machine: An apparatus that produces fruit for its operators, grist for historians, and misery for everyone else. Only two such machines, located on Capitol and First streets in Washington, DC, are still in operation.
Politician: Someone who works hard for the
Politics: A tool of demolition which people have, continually and misguidedly, attempted to use as a tool of repair. Politics cannot fix anything, only decide how things will be broken.
Poverty: A condition which, according to some, can be cured by working harder. According to others, this condition only exists in the first place because those who say "you just need to work harder" are too lazy to do anything about it. In theory, both groups are correct. In practice, poverty seems to be a condition without cause or cure, as neither have been successfully isolated or demonstrated in the real world.
Pregnancy: A common form of parasitism, as vital and natural as any other.
Principle of Occam's Razor, The: The science of saving money on medicine and medical care by dismissing all physical ailments as "old football injury" and "something I ate."
Progress: The story of privileges being gradually turned into rights.
Progressive: A masochistic political philosophy whose adherents apparently enjoy playing tug-of-war with religious fundamentalists.
Prostitution: The world's most honest profession.
Pundit: A furnace that thinks itself a prophet.
Prostitution: The world's most honest profession.
Pundit: A furnace that thinks itself a prophet.
Racism: Seeking to label black protestors as terrorists, and white terrorists as protestors.
Rebellion: An act of deliberate, directed nonconformity. It is most often achieved by conforming zealously to the standards and mores of some other group against whom the rebel is not currently rebelling.
Recursive Notoriety: A phenomenon by which there exist celebrities who are famous for being famous.
Republican: A voter or politician who believes that what Jesus would do in government is to create an ideal political, social, and economic environment for the owners of Fortune 500 companies, while leaving unprofitable rural areas in the hands of dangerous (potentially murderous) religious zealots.
Research: God's punishment for the sins of the researcher. They must be exceptional sinners.
Running Joke: An alternative lowest common denominator of humor, useful to those who lack the vocabulary to reliably invent puns.
Sarcasm: Sarcasm? Like anyone uses that anymore.
School: A societal institution created for the purpose of training people to think less and obey more. The effectiveness of this institution, compared with other societal institutions, is unusually high--perhaps even uniquely so.
Science: A field of study largely concerned with doing interesting and unusual things in the most precise and tedious manner possible.
Science Fiction: A pleasure and a paradox.
Sex: A committee processes as messy as any other.
Republican: A voter or politician who believes that what Jesus would do in government is to create an ideal political, social, and economic environment for the owners of Fortune 500 companies, while leaving unprofitable rural areas in the hands of dangerous (potentially murderous) religious zealots.
Running Joke: An alternative lowest common denominator of humor, useful to those who lack the vocabulary to reliably invent puns.
Sarcasm: Sarcasm? Like anyone uses that anymore.
School: A societal institution created for the purpose of training people to think less and obey more. The effectiveness of this institution, compared with other societal institutions, is unusually high--perhaps even uniquely so.
Science: A field of study largely concerned with doing interesting and unusual things in the most precise and tedious manner possible.
Science Fiction: A pleasure and a paradox.
Sex: A committee processes as messy as any other.
Shareholder: A wizard of some sort. A shareholder can turn your work into his money by doing absolutely nothing.
Sibling: See: Scapegoat, Punching Bag.
Smell: A sense which, in animals, is useful for perceiving the outside world, and which, in humans, produces little utility and much complaint.
Society: Things that people do because other people want them to.
Speed Limit: In theory, the maximum speed at which one may drive. In practice, the minimum speed at which one must drive.
Suit: A garment worn to signal that the wearer wishes to appear as the independent and impressive wielder of one's own power while functioning as the unquestioning and thoroughly ordinary instrument of institutional power.
Talent: The ability to do the unusual, regularly.
Tasty Steaks: The inverse situation of sour grapes, in which you are the recipient of that which someone else pursued or desired.
Technology: That which is rendered popular by newness until time and improvement render it more useful than its predecessor, at which point it becomes unfashionable.
Television: A modern substitute for babysitters, schoolteachers, churches, stages, concert halls, sex, and human contact.
Theory: In science, a thorough and rigorous description of exactly how the world works. In all other fields, an esoteric and yet oddly vague description of how the world might have worked, might occasionally work, or ought to have worked, if the real world didn't work differently all or nearly all of the time. Surprisingly, despite essentially being its own antonym, this word has never caused the slightest amount of confusion (at least in theory).
Time: A perpetually-undervalued, non-renewable resource.
TL;DR: An abbreviation which modern culture has invented to serve as a concise and hasty declaration that my ignorance is superior to your knowledge.
Travel: A leisurely form of relaxation--at least among those able to sleep on an airplane.
Trending: An adjective that denotes a thing nearing the end of its fifteen minutes of fame.
Trump: Famously, perhaps frequently, defined as a stupid man's idea of a smart man, a poor man's idea of a rich man, and a weak man's idea of a strong man. Equally, perhaps more accurately, defined as a stupid man's idea of a smart man, a stupid man's idea of a rich man, and a stupid man's idea of a strong man.
Sibling: See: Scapegoat, Punching Bag.
Smell: A sense which, in animals, is useful for perceiving the outside world, and which, in humans, produces little utility and much complaint.
Speed Limit: In theory, the maximum speed at which one may drive. In practice, the minimum speed at which one must drive.
Suit: A garment worn to signal that the wearer wishes to appear as the independent and impressive wielder of one's own power while functioning as the unquestioning and thoroughly ordinary instrument of institutional power.
Talent: The ability to do the unusual, regularly.
Tasty Steaks: The inverse situation of sour grapes, in which you are the recipient of that which someone else pursued or desired.
Technology: That which is rendered popular by newness until time and improvement render it more useful than its predecessor, at which point it becomes unfashionable.
Television: A modern substitute for babysitters, schoolteachers, churches, stages, concert halls, sex, and human contact.
Theory: In science, a thorough and rigorous description of exactly how the world works. In all other fields, an esoteric and yet oddly vague description of how the world might have worked, might occasionally work, or ought to have worked, if the real world didn't work differently all or nearly all of the time. Surprisingly, despite essentially being its own antonym, this word has never caused the slightest amount of confusion (at least in theory).
Time: A perpetually-undervalued, non-renewable resource.
TL;DR: An abbreviation which modern culture has invented to serve as a concise and hasty declaration that my ignorance is superior to your knowledge.
Travel: A leisurely form of relaxation--at least among those able to sleep on an airplane.
Trending: An adjective that denotes a thing nearing the end of its fifteen minutes of fame.
Trump: Famously, perhaps frequently, defined as a stupid man's idea of a smart man, a poor man's idea of a rich man, and a weak man's idea of a strong man. Equally, perhaps more accurately, defined as a stupid man's idea of a smart man, a stupid man's idea of a rich man, and a stupid man's idea of a strong man.
Unemployment: A state of misery.
Vegetarianism:
Religious self-flagellation in India and a fad diet in the west. The
weight-loss strategy behind Vegetarianism is that if you make eating an
unpleasant experience you won't do it as much.
Veganism, the most extreme variety of Vegetarianism, is actually aversion therapy for food.
Vigilance: Widely believed to be the price of liberty. As is frequently the case with conventional wisdom, that belief is categorically incorrect. The true price of liberty is a willingness to abide those with which one disagrees, and all empirical evidence suggests that none yet live who are willing and able to pay it.
Violence: America's Pastime.
Voters: A body of people who assume the task of choosing between a handful of more or less thoroughly-terrible options, and generally take great pride in doing so.
Veganism, the most extreme variety of Vegetarianism, is actually aversion therapy for food.
Vigilance: Widely believed to be the price of liberty. As is frequently the case with conventional wisdom, that belief is categorically incorrect. The true price of liberty is a willingness to abide those with which one disagrees, and all empirical evidence suggests that none yet live who are willing and able to pay it.
Violence: America's Pastime.
Voters: A body of people who assume the task of choosing between a handful of more or less thoroughly-terrible options, and generally take great pride in doing so.
Wage Theft: A crime which, given the social circumstances, ought to be punished by summary execution.
War: A large-scale, destructive conflict between two or more parties, all of which are capable of both fighting and being fought. Traditionally, nations fight wars against other nations, and name them after the nations involved. However, the United States has seen fit to break with this tradition by pursuing sham "wars" against non-sovereign entities and naming them for whatever is politically convenient. For instance, the "War on Poverty" and the "War on Terror" were actually two different fronts in a war against the Constitution, while the so-called "War on Drugs" is actually a war on minorities and poor people. Meanwhile, the nation's conflicts against foreign governments now take the form of unofficial, disorganized executive police actions.
Wealth: An object of worship. It serves as the monotheistic god of the world's largest religion.
Wireless Internet: A novel form of infectious contagion.
War: A large-scale, destructive conflict between two or more parties, all of which are capable of both fighting and being fought. Traditionally, nations fight wars against other nations, and name them after the nations involved. However, the United States has seen fit to break with this tradition by pursuing sham "wars" against non-sovereign entities and naming them for whatever is politically convenient. For instance, the "War on Poverty" and the "War on Terror" were actually two different fronts in a war against the Constitution, while the so-called "War on Drugs" is actually a war on minorities and poor people. Meanwhile, the nation's conflicts against foreign governments now take the form of unofficial, disorganized executive police actions.
Wealth: An object of worship. It serves as the monotheistic god of the world's largest religion.
Wireless Internet: A novel form of infectious contagion.
Work: Trading the bulk of one's time and health for money. Work is perhaps slightly better than a lack thereof.
Writer: One whose self-assigned role is to resolve the dissonance between what authority told us and what experience tells us. See also: Artist.
X: Reputable words do not begin with the letter X, which is reserved for brand names (Xanax), children's toys (xylophone), and dead brown people from the age of antiquity (Xerxes).
Youth: A state of flexibility. The muscles and credulity of the young are much more difficult to strain than those of the old, the latter tending to respond at the slightest provocation.
YouTube: A postmodern substitute for babysitters, schoolteachers, churches, stages, concert halls, sex, and human contact.
Z: Reputable words to not begin with the letter Z, which is reserved for brand names (Zoloft), children's toys (zoetrope), and fictional white people from the age of antiquity (Zeus).
Writer: One whose self-assigned role is to resolve the dissonance between what authority told us and what experience tells us. See also: Artist.
X: Reputable words do not begin with the letter X, which is reserved for brand names (Xanax), children's toys (xylophone), and dead brown people from the age of antiquity (Xerxes).
Youth: A state of flexibility. The muscles and credulity of the young are much more difficult to strain than those of the old, the latter tending to respond at the slightest provocation.
YouTube: A postmodern substitute for babysitters, schoolteachers, churches, stages, concert halls, sex, and human contact.
Z: Reputable words to not begin with the letter Z, which is reserved for brand names (Zoloft), children's toys (zoetrope), and fictional white people from the age of antiquity (Zeus).
