• Artificial Insemination
• Procreation without recreation.
• Author
• A writer with connections in the publishing industry.
• Bookcase
• A piece of furniture used in America to house Bowling trophies and Elvis collectibles.
• Boss
• A personal dictator appointed to those of us fortunate enough to live in free societies.
• Bulimia
• Retched excess.
• Chic
• Considered smart without the deadening implication of intelligence.
• Childhood
• The rapidly shrinking interval between infancy and first arrest on a drug or weapons charge.
• Clique
• A group of insiders who greet outsiders with their backsides; a closed circle of asses.
• Consultant
• A jobless person who shows executives how to work.
• Denial
• How an optimist keeps from becoming a pessimist.
• Dentures
• Two rows of artificial ivories that may be removed periodically to frighten one's grandchildren or provide accompaniment to Spanish music.
• DNA
• A complex organic molecule characterized as the building block of life and appropriately shaped like a spiral staircase to nowhere.
• Erudite
• Exhibiting a degree of book learning fatal to success in any business or romantic enterprise.
• Experience
• In the working world, something you can't get unless you've already got it, in which case you probably don't want any more of it.
• Fiber
• Edible wood pulp said to aid digestion and prolong life, so that we might enjoy another six or eight years in which to consume wood pulp.
• Fitness
• Salvation through perspiration.
• Funeral Home
• A stately manse occupied by transients who continually receive visitors but lack the energy and inclination to entertain them.
• Genetic Engineering
• Tampering with chromosomes so that science might develop a new miracle cure or a rabbit that plays the banjo.
• Gourmet
• A food fetishist.
• Hip
• Smartly attuned to the latest cutting edge clichés.
• Hooker
• A working woman commonly despised by people who sell themselves for even less.
• Ideologue
• Generally an obscure humorless zealot who finds fulfillment by spouting the ideas of famous humorless zealots.
• Jeans
• Lower half of the international uniform of youth, the upper half being the zits.
• Job
• A state of employment everyone wants but few look forward to on a Monday morning.
• Kleptomaniac
• A thief with breeding.
• Laboratory Animals
• Furry foot-soldiers drafted in the name of science. Some die nobly in the battle to eradicate cancer; others give their lives so that we might produce a peach-scented dandruff shampoo.
• Lawyer
• A professional advocate hired to bend the law on behalf of a paying client; for this reason considered the most suitable background for entry into politics.
• Lecher
• A stud with liver spots.
• Looting
• A public shopping spree generously sponsored by local merchants in the wake of a riot.
• Lottery
• The equivalent of betting that the next pope will be from Duluth, or that the parrot in the pet store window speaks Flemish.
• Martial Arts
• A family of Asiatic self-defense disciplines consisting largely of sweeping ornamental gestures of the arms and legs; amusing to look at but disappointingly ineffective when one's opponent is armed with a semi-automatic.
• Math Anxiety
• An intense lifelong fear of two trains approaching each other at speeds of 60 and 80 mph.
• Mugger
• A benevolent citizen of the streets who frequently spares the lives of total strangers in exchange for any cash and valuables in their possession.
• Negotiating
• The art of persuading your opponent to take the nice shiny copper penny and give you the wrinkled old paper money.
• Neighbors
• The strangers who live next door.
• Neurotic
• Sane but unhappy about it.
• Obituary
• A final summation of our lives that, for most of us, occupies about three inches of space in what will shortly become cage liner for your neighbor's parakeet.
• Parasite
• A base creature that extracts a living from the lives of others, like a tapeworm or a biographer.
• Positive Thinking
• Self-improvement through self-deception.
• Quagmire
• Any situation more easily entered into than exited from; e.g., a guerrilla war, a bad marriage or a conversation with an insurance salesman.
• Quality of Life
• What an industrialized nation is said to offer when enough of its citizens are suffering from terminal stress.
• Redneck
• Popular term for a rustic male, but rarely employed when addressing one in person.
• Revolutionary
• An oppressed person waiting for the opportunity to become an oppressor.
• Shallowness
• The root cause of chronic good health, high school popularity, appearance on the fiction bestseller lists, and gainful employment on local TV news broadcasts.
• Smile
• To expose a portion of one's skeleton as a gesture of goodwill toward a fellow human.
• Star
• A performer who makes more than his or her agent.
• State-of-the-Art
• Soon-to-be-obsolete.
• Superstar
• A performer who makes more than Guatemala.
• Taboo
• Any strict cultural prohibition that, when breached, causes everyone in the group to gasp; e.g., cannibalism, public nudity, serving fried pork rinds at a Hasidic wedding, or answering the question "How are you?" in the negative.
• Trailer Parks
• Latter-day gypsy camps scattered throughout the vast American hinterland; humble places of abode where hope dies young and tornadoes gravitate like flies to road kill.
• Unemployment
• The usual alternative to overwork.
• Urinal
• The one place where all men are peers.
• Virgin
• A young innocent who in former times was sacrificed to the gods but who now merely lives in disgrace.
• Voting
• The right of our citizens to do as they please behind a curtain, as long as they do it alone.
• Wake
1. 1. A convivial soiree with a preserved corpse in the room.
2. What the mourners would be visibly startled to see the corpse do, especially those expecting a sizable inheritance.
• White Supremacists
The most convincing argument against the theory of white racial superiority.
• X-Chromosome
• A genetic double-cross that empowers women with the ability to bear children and reserves for men the right to be color-blind hemophiliacs.
• X-Ray
• A diagnostic tool used to detect existing cancerous growths and create new ones for future examinations to reveal.
• Zombie
• A mirthless creature beloved by teenage horror movie fans and those in charge of the hiring at accounting firms.
• Zoo
• A pleasant and instructive wildlife park, lately denounced for depriving animals of their right to starve or be eaten alive in their natural habitats.