(n.) a professional who studies the health and condition of teeth, regarded as kin to schoolteachers and other torturers

*This entry automatically adjusts itself to apply to the planet you are currently on.
(also: leaving the earth)
If the information below is not applicable to the planet on which you currently find yourself, then you are on the wrong planet and should rectify that at your earliest convenience.*

1. Phone NASA. Their phone number is (713) 483-3111. Explain that it's very important that you get away as soon as possible.(also: nasa)
2. If they do not cooperate, phone a friend you might have in the White House- (202) 456-1414- to have a word on your behalf with the guys at NASA.
3. If you don't have any friends in the White House, phone the Kremlin (Ask the overseas operator for 0107-095- 295-9051). They don't have any friends there either (at least, none to speak of), but they do seem to have a little influence, so you might as well try.(also: white house)
4. If that also fails, phone the Pope for guidance. His telephone number is 001-39-6-6982, and I gather that his switchboard is infallible.(also: pope)
5. If all these attempts fail, flag down a passing flying saucer and explain that it's vitally important you get away before your phone bill arrives.

(1578 – 3 June 1657) English physician who made contributions to understanding how blood circulated in the body.
(also: 100 most influential people in the world)
(also: william harvey quotes)

n. A pestilent fellow who, under the pretense of recording some particular stage in the development of a language, does what he can to arrest its growth, stiffen its flexibility and mechanize its methods. For your lexicographer, having written his dictionary, comes to be considered "as one having authority," whereas his function is only to make a record, not to give a law. The natural servility of the human understanding having invested him with judicial power, surrenders its right of reason and submits itself to a chronicle as if it were a statute. Let the dictionary (for example) mark a good word as "obsolete" or "obsolescent" and few men thereafter venture to use it, whatever their need of it and however desirable its restoration to favor — whereby the process of impoverishment is accelerated and speech decays. On the contrary, the bold and discerning writer who, recognizing the truth that language must grow by innovation if it grow at all, makes new words and uses the old in an unfamiliar sense, has no following and is tartly reminded that "it isn't in the dictionary" — although down to the time of the first lexicographer (Heaven forgive him!) no author ever had used a word that was in the dictionary. In the golden prime and high noon of English speech; when from the lips of the great Elizabethans fell words that made their own meaning and carried it in their very sound; when a Shakspeare and a Bacon were possible, and the language now rapidly perishing at one end and slowly renewed at the other was in vigorous growth and hardy preservation — sweeter than honey and stronger than a lion — the lexicographer was a person unknown, the dictionary a creation which his Creator had not created him to create.

---

God said: "Let Spirit perish into Form,"
And lexicographers arose, a swarm!
Thought fled and left her clothing, which they took,
And catalogued each garment in a book.
Now, from her leafy covert when she cries:
"Give me my clothes and I'll return," they rise
And scan the list, and say without compassion:
"Excuse us — they are mostly out of fashion."
—Sigismund Smith

(also: The Devil's Dictionary)

(interjection) An exclamation of frustration or desperation, often uttered by computer users experiencing technical difficulties. The phrase is a humorous adaptation of the Christian prayer "Jesus take the wheel," which implores Jesus to take control and guide one's life in a positive direction. In the context of computer problems, the speaker is similarly invoking divine intervention to resolve the issue at hand. However, it is unclear whether Jesus has any particular expertise in computer repair, or if he is simply being asked to take over out of a sense of desperation. Nevertheless, the phrase has become a popular meme in online communities, serving as a humorous expression of the exasperation many feel when confronted with malfunctioning technology.

A certain literary quality frequently observed in popular novels, especially in those written by women and young girls, who give it another name and think that in introducing it they are occupying a neglected field of letters and reaping an overlooked harvest. If they have the misfortune to live long enough they are tormented with a desire to burn their sheaves.

(also: The Devil's Dictionary)

(1632-1723) Dutch chemist – founder of microbiology.
(also: 100 most influential people in the world)
(also: antony van leeuwenhoek quotes)

No, i'm spartacus

(n.) the great and noble thing we must all strive for, which we lack only because we're bogged down by petty arguments

except for when healthy disagreement is a good thing and we would see that if we weren't so bogged down by lack of ideological diversity

so basically everything is completely wrong either way. see order and chaos

(n.) a breed of European that combines the culinary pretensions of the french with the fiery passions of the spanish. they were briefly the center of the civilized western world but today are better known for pizza and pasta

(adj.) coming from the origin, and remaining connected to it; perhaps transformed, but never warped nor mutilated.
many people of the modern first world live their lives carrying (and burdened by) the mistaken idea that to be original means something has to be new: artists. teenagers. but that's simply not what original means, in its true spirit!
and I do say burdened because it can weigh heavy if you want to be original and leave an original legacy. and it will feel like an impossible task.
release that ego weight.



it's about being true, not about being new.

(also: nothing new under the sun)
(also: a little love is not so bad)

A writer whose imagination concerns itself with supernatural phenomena, especially the doings of spooks. One of the most illustrious spookers of our time is Mr. William D. Howells, who introduces a well-credentialed reader to as respectable and mannerly a company of spooks as one could wish to meet. To the terror that invests the chairman of a district school board, the Howells ghost adds something of the mystery enveloping a farmer from another township.

(also: The Devil's Dictionary)

(n.) a dipping device too big to be a spoon (to show you mean business) and too small to be a shovel (to show you're not insecure)

(v.) scooping things with a scooping motion often by using a scoop

I do understand where you're coming from (esp re: being uncomfortable with normal/ tradition), but well, we disagree here in terms of what original means.. but that's ok, disagreement can give rise to clarity.

The science and history of the animal kingdom, including its king, the House Fly (Musca maledicta). The father of Zoölogy was Aristotle, as is universally conceded, but the name of its mother has not come down to us. Two of the science's most illustrious expounders were Buffon and Oliver Goldsmith, from both of whom we learn (L'Histoire générale des animaux and A History of Animated Nature) that the domestic cow sheds its horns every two years.
(also: The Devil's Dictionary)

(n.) something one gives up in order to appease a temperamental deity or wife

(v.) to make something into a sacrifice by sacrificing it. ya dig?

A religious or semi-religious ceremony fixed by law, precept or custom, with the essential oil of sincerity carefully squeezed out of it.
(also: creation of the universe)
(also: The Devil's Dictionary)

(n.) a repository for the unwell, so that their unwellness does not become a source of distress for those whose unwellness is easier to conceal.

(1564- 1616) English poet and playwright.
(also: 100 most influential people in the world)
(also: william shakespeare quotes)

euclid was a student of the great mouseion ("temple of the muses") in alexandria, like his later successor archimedes. among his many impressive scholarly works was a treatise outlining the four elements of the natural world.

of course, as any modern schoolchild knows, there are hundreds of natural elements, demonstrating that even a brilliant man like euclid was ultimately an ignorant savage in the grand scheme of things. suck it, old man.