More Definitions From "The Cynic's Dictionary"

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• AUTHOR A writer with connections in the publishing industry.
• BOSS A personal dictator appointed to those of us fortunate enough to live in free societies.
• CHILDHOOD The rapidly shrinking interval between infancy and first arrest on a drug or weapons charge.
• DENIAL How an optimist keeps from becoming a pessimist.
• 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.
• FITNESS Salvation through perspiration.
• GOURMET A food fetishist.
• HOOKER A working woman commonly despised by people who sell themselves for even less.
• IDEOLOGUE Generally an obscure humourless zealot who finds fulfilment by spouting the ideas of famous humourless zealots.
• JEANS Lower half of the international uniform of youth, the upper half being the spots.
• 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.
• MARTIAL ARTS A family of Asiatic self-defence 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.
• NEIGHBOURS The strangers who live next door.
• ORGASM The punchline some women just don't get, generally because their mates have a tendency to rush through the joke.
• PARASITE A base creature that extracts a living from the lives of others, like a tapeworm or a biographer.
• 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.
• REDNECK Popular term for a rustic male, but rarely employed when addressing one in person.
• SMILE To expose a portion of one's skeleton as a gesture of goodwill toward a fellow human.
• 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 roadkill.
• UNWED MOTHER One who helps perpetuate the genes of an unwed father, without the latter's talent for becoming invisible at will.
• VOTING The right of our citizens to do as they please behind a curtain, as long as they do it alone.
• WHITE SUPREMACISTS The most convincing argument against the theory of white racial superiority.
• X-RAY A diagnostic tool used to detect existing cancerous growths and create new ones for future examinations to reveal.
• Y-CHROMOSOME A line of genes designed for men only; the cause of virility, war, baldness, hockey, sex crimes, clever inventions and a disinclination to ask for directions when lost.
• 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.