(n.) a bunch of weird rituals and confected historical narratives intended to make fraternities for the middle-aged seem more respectable and mysterious. the rites and practices of freemasonry are very secretive and not shared with outsiders on pain of severe punishment; these practices can however be read about in countless publicly-available books on the subject

A device is made up of metal ,steel ,copper and a lot more alloys that helps us connect to the internet, it allows us to do the things we used to have no way of carrying around like calculators , phones , fax machines ,etc . it allows easy access to a operating system designed in such a way anyone can understand it . It helps us connect to far away people , access unlimited information through networks of networks (www) or World Wide Web . and it has became so affordable that almost everyone has them and so easy to use everyone can use it.

n. An infernal river whose waters caused those who drank them to forget all they knew; whereas the drinker of Spring Valley forgets nothing but the Third Commandment and the pious precepts of a sainted mother.
(also: The Devil's Dictionary)

(n.) medium sized insectivore with protruding nasal implement.

(n.) a fiery pit of eternal torment that, according to religion, awaits all wrongdoers, criminals, irreverent blasphemers, masturbators, teen sex icons, performers of counterculture music, and assorted sundry other nonconformists.

(also: heaven)
(also: afterlife)

To destroy. Specifically, to destroy a maid's belief in the virtue of maids.
(also: maid)
(also: The Devil's Dictionary)

A short story padded. A species of composition bearing the same relation to literature that the panorama bears to art. As it is too long to be read at a sitting the impressions made by its successive parts are successively effaced, as in the panorama. Unity, totality of effect, is impossible; for besides the few pages last read all that is carried in mind is the mere plot of what has gone before. To the romance the novel is what photography is to painting. Its distinguishing principle, probability, corresponds to the literal actuality of the photograph and puts it distinctly into the category of reporting; whereas the free wing of the romancer enables him to mount to such altitudes of imagination as he may be fitted to attain; and the first three essentials of the literary art are imagination, imagination and imagination. The art of writing novels, such as it was, is long dead everywhere except in Russia, where it is new. Peace to its ashes — some of which have a large sale.

(n.)A mostly empty solar oven with a few dozen people scattered around the edges

A favorite weapon of the assassins of character.

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Sharp, irresistible by mail or shield,
By guard unparried as by flight unstayed,
O serviceable Rumor, let me wield
Against my enemy no other blade.
His be the terror of a foe unseen,
His the inutile hand upon the hilt,
And mine the deadly tongue, long, slender, keen,
Hinting a rumor of some ancient guilt.
So shall I slay the wretch without a blow,
Spare me to celebrate his overthrow,
And nurse my valor for another foe.
—Joel Buxter
(also: humor)
(also: The Devil's Dictionary)

how the Earth is miraculously just right to allow the existence of the type of life that exists on Earth.

a piano haunted by the ghost of a pianist, left to forever play whatever piece it was that led to his death.

(n.) remedy, poison, and scapegoat -- a trifecta.
remedy because it can heal, in the right circumstances and the right amounts.
poison because it can cause damage, in the wrong place, at the wrong time, on the wrong person, in the wrong form.
scapegoat because the act of summoning all evils and fallings-short of, say, a community onto one person & then casting them out/ sacrificing them can lead to a clean slate and healing, or it can lead to things being swept under the rug and continued festering.

being reactive (aka, living within past assumptions; aka, blind to your current circumstances) can lead you astray. you may apply some substance, activity or method and expect to heal, but instead, it only causes damage. ready-made "cure-alls" and "easy fixes" fall into this category.

(also: paradox)
(also: damage)
(also: healing)
(also: pay attention)

Originally the ninth month of the year until some Roman jerk decided he wanted to destroy all known naming conventions and slide two extra months in the world's biggest and most successful hold my beer.

(also: Hold My Beer)

(adj.) of language; meant to persuade, imply and suggest, for all those times when plainspokenness would be too pussy

1. A suit made or brought for the specified purpose of wearing for your birthday.
2. (also: nudity)
3. Being or having been found being naked

(n.) a gliding lemur-creature hailing from southeast asia, presumably having emigrated there from some sort of other planet inhabited by nightmares

despite the implication of the name, it is not a hybrid of the colubra and the galago

Archaic practices designed to rob scalps and backs of the most pleasurable sensation the nerve endings within can experience.

also "sci-fi" (skiffy) if you're afraid of using too many syllables.

a genre of fiction, consisting of stories that, broadly speaking, dare to imagine new inventions, technologies, or scientific discoveries, and how they would affect the world. often this will consist of showing us how humanity would use these new discoveries to destroy itself or oppress each other; there are startlingly few stories where police using psychics to stop crime, or society having a robot taskforce, or people upgrading themselves with cyborg limbs, actually turns out to be a *good* thing (though this may just be because stories where only good things happen are boring).

some concepts you should know about so you won't look like a dweeb in front of sci-fi fans:
* the future, where a lot of these stories tend to take place
* aliens, folks who come from off this island earth. show up in a lot of sci-fi stories, usually invading us, getting invaded by us, or just sort of hanging around bars as a way for the special effects team to show off.
* robot, artificially constructed people, because naturally you'd want your smartphone to look like a person
* ftl: faster-than-light travel, required in any sci-fi story with space travel, or else it would take millennia to finish
* time travel: being able to leave today and go to yesterday, or tomorrow. prone to logical paradoxes.
* hard science fiction: sci-fi that tries to be as realistic as possible. is not a form of pornography
* space opera: stories where people fly around in spaceships and have fantastic adventures on other planets
* cyberpunk and other punk; stories that show how technological process won't fix society's usual problems

a logical fallacy where I don't follow

n. A delicate and costly textile fabric with which the female soul is netted like a fish.

(also: The Devil's Dictionary)