(phrase) The ingenious defense strategy employed by academically challenged individuals when faced with unfinished assignments. A whimsical excuse that taps into the profound appetite of canines for academic knowledge, transforming homework into a delectable delicacy. The phenomenon amuses teachers, inspires disbelief, and perpetuates the legend of scholarly pups with insatiable appetites.


(also: homework)
(also: student)
(also: teacher)

A nation in which, the thing governing and the thing governed being the same, there is only a permitted authority to enforce an optional obedience. In a republic the foundation of public order is the ever lessening habit of submission inherited from ancestors who, being truly governed, submitted because they had to. There are as many kinds of republics as there are gradations between the despotism whence they came and the anarchy whither they lead.
(also: governing people)
(also: The Devil's Dictionary)

One forgotten of the gods and living to a great age. History is abundantly supplied with examples, from Methuselah to Old Parr, but some notable instances of longevity are less well known. A Calabrian peasant named Coloni, born in 1753, lived so long that he had what he considered a glimpse of the dawn of universal peace. Scanavius relates that he knew an archbishop who was so old that he could remember a time when he did not deserve hanging. In 1566 a linen draper of Bristol, England, declared that he had lived five hundred years, and that in all that time he had never told a lie. There are instances of longevity (macrobiosis) in our own country. Senator Chauncey Depew is old enough to know better. The editor of The American, a newspaper in New York City, has a memory that goes back to the time when he was a rascal, but not to the fact. The President of the United States was born so long ago that many of the friends of his youth have risen to high political and military preferment without the assistance of personal merit. The verses following were written by a macrobian:

---

When I was young the world was fair
And amiable and sunny.
A brightness was in all the air,
In all the waters, honey.
The jokes were fine and funny,
The statesmen honest in their views,
And in their lives, as well,
And when you heard a bit of news
'Twas true enough to tell.
Men were not ranting, shouting, reeking,
Nor women "generally speaking."

The Summer then was long indeed:
It lasted one whole season!
The sparkling Winter gave no heed
When ordered by Unreason
To bring the early peas on.
Now, where the dickens is the sense
In calling that a year
Which does no more than just commence
Before the end is near?
When I was young the year extended
From month to month until it ended.

I know not why the world has changed
To something dark and dreary,
And everything is now arranged
To make a fellow weary.
The Weather Man — I fear he
Has much to do with it, for, sure,
The air is not the same:
It chokes you when it is impure,
When pure it makes you lame.
With windows closed you are asthmatic;
Open, neuralgic or sciatic.

Well, I suppose this new régime
Of dun degeneration
Seems eviler than it would seem
To a better observation,
And has for compensation
Some blessings in a deep disguise
Which mortal sight has failed
To pierce, although to angels' eyes
They're visibly unveiled.
If Age is such a boon, good land!
He's costumed by a master hand!
—Venable Strigg

(also: disco)

(also: techno)
(also: punk)

(also: 80s hair)
https://www.allure.com/gallery/80s-hairstyles-trends
(also: roller skates)
(also: scratch and sniff stickers)
http://www.liketotally80s.com/2008/08/scratch-sniff-stickers/

https://mentalitch.com/top-political-events-of-the-80s/
(also: war on drugs) (at its height)
https://drugpolicy.org/issues/brief-history-drug-war
https://slimemoldtimemold.com/2021/04/19/higher-than-the-shoulders-of-giants-or-a-scientists-history-of-drugs/

(also: hiv/ aids crisis)
https://www.history.com/topics/1980s/hiv-aids-crisis-timeline
(also: Tiananmen Square Massacre)
(also: cults)
https://www.arcgis.com/apps/Cascade/index.html?appid=7b33d5df643842a8875ff9f675ce6ae2
https://medium.com/s/how-to-cult/by-the-decade-notorious-20th-century-american-cults-d62939b065e5

An informal way of saying “brother.”

A particular type of disappointment. By the kind of intelligence that sees in an exception a proof of the rule the wisdom of an act is judged by the outcome, the result. This is immortal nonsense; the wisdom of an act is to be judged by the light that the doer had when he performed it.

(584 CE – 644 CE) Powerful Muslim Caliphate and senior companion of Muhammad. An influential figure in Sunni Islam.
(also: 100 most influential people in the world)
(also: umar ibn al-khattab quotes)

The part of Africa where the natives got screwed by the Dutch, and then the British screwed both the natives and the Dutch, and then the Dutch and the British teamed up to really brutally screw the natives for decades.

Today the system of screwing ('apartheid') is dismantled and its aftereffects slowly being undone, but there's no help to be had for those crazy accents.

n. An interior convulsion, producing a distortion of the features and accompanied by inarticulate noises. It is infectious and, though intermittent, incurable. Liability to attacks of laughter is one of the characteristics distinguishing man from the animals — these being not only inaccessible to the provocation of his example, but impregnable to the microbes having original jurisdiction in bestowal of the disease. Whether laughter could be imparted to animals by inoculation from the human patient is a question that has not been answered by experimentation. Dr. Meir Witchell holds that the infectious character of laughter is due to the instantaneous fermentation of sputa diffused in a spray. From this peculiarity he names the disorder Convulsio spargens.

(also: The Devil's Dictionary)

(n.) one whose newfangled ideas indicate the imminent collapse of all proud and decent society, society evidently being constantly threatened by newfangled ideas

(n.) the life of every party, a light source dressed up with an attractive fabric covering. consider adopting a lamp today.

(n.) actually more of a dish, not a cup or goblet, despite what others would have you believe. also possibly a metaphor for something abstruse and religious

(n.) bit at the front or top of many life forms, where the brain is kept.

among the reasonable, the head is said to be good upon the owner's shoulders; among the infatuated, it is said to be above their heels; one who is in the throes of panic has lost their head; and so on. clearly matters of head are quite culturally significant

(n.) a Sufi order, whirling towards God.


(the following link is not broken, though it appears to be)


(also: sufi)
(also: dance)
(also: trance)
(also: meditation)

The part of the world lying west (or east) of the Orient. It is largely inhabited by Christians, a powerful subtribe of the Hypocrites, whose principal industries are murder and cheating, which they are pleased to call "war" and "commerce." These, also, are the principal industries of the Orient.

Value, plus a reasonable sum for the wear and tear of conscience in demanding it.
(also: The Devil's Dictionary)

(1847 – 1931) – Inventor and businessman helped introduce electricity and electric light bulbs.
(also: 100 most influential people in the world)
(also: thomas edison quotes)

v.i. To butt in.
(also: the devils dictionary)

n. A large red organ thoughtfully provided by nature to be bilious with. The sentiments and emotions which every literary anatomist now knows to haunt the heart were anciently believed to infest the liver; and even Gascoygne, speaking of the emotional side of human nature, calls it "our hepaticall parte." It was at one time considered the seat of life; hence its name — liver, the thing we live with. The liver is heaven's best gift to the goose; without it that bird would be unable to supply us with the Strasbourg paté.

(also: The Devil's Dictionary)

When have brevity, mean fast