(551 – 479 BC) – Chinese philosopher.
(also: 100 most influential people in the world)
(also: confucius quotes)

(n.) a city
In the winter time the temperature falls well below the legal minimum, or rather it would do if anybody had the common sense to set a legal minimum. The last time anybody made a list of the top hundred character attributes of New Yorkers, common sense snuck in at number 79.

In the summer it's too darn hot. It's one thing to be the sort of life form that thrives on heat and finds, as the Frastrans do, that the temperature range between 40,000 and 40,004 is very equable, but it's quite another to be the sort of animal that has to wrap itself up in lots of other animals at one point in your planet's orbit, and then find, half an orbit later, that your skin's bubbling.

Spring is over-rated. A lot of the inhabitants of New York will honk on mightily about the pleasures of spring, but if they actually knew the first thing about the pleasures of spring they would know of at least five thousand nine hundred and eighty three better places to spend it than New York, and that's just on the same latitude.

Fall, though, is the worst. Few things are worse than fall in New York. Some of the things that live in the lower intestines of rats would disagree, but most of the things that live in the lower intestines of rats are highly disagreeable anyway, so their opinion can and should be discounted. When it's fall in New York, the air smells as if someone's been frying goats in it, and if you are keen to breathe, the best plan is to open a window and stick your head in a building.

(also: new orleans)

(1451 – 1506) – Italian explorer landed in America.
(also: 100 most influential people in the world)
(also: christopher columbus quotes)

(n.) the act of relieving someone of their most pressing burden

(n.)
narcotics? yes.
your prescription at the pharmacy? yes.
psychedelics? yes.
coffee? yes.

the associations, implications, and moral judgments behind 'drugs' varies widely. so instead of 'drugs', use the specific category you mean.

the most limited definition I've seen is, "a substance recognized or defined by the US Food, Drug, and Cosmetic Act."
a drug is a drug because of the effects it has on a person when used, not because of a label slapped on it by some top-down council. this definition only works in its legal function. and yet, this narrow style of thinking about 'drugs' (for example, all drugs are bad; drug use is always drug abuse; see also, thinking such as https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Z2djwbhadeY) is pervasive beyond the legal system.

(also: medicine)
(also: harm reduction)
(also: addiction)

(also: immoral vs illegal)
(also: social norms)
(also: black and white thinking)

a star begins its life as a nebula, a large ionized gaseous cloud that eventually coalesces and ignites.

after some millions of years of life, the star then 'dies;' either it simply dwindles away to a white dwarf and then a frigid black dwarf, or it lights up and explodes into a cosmic inferno known as a supernova. when a supernova finally clears, all that remains is a black hole.

black holes consist of a star's mass compressed into an infinitesimal point, creating such a tremendous gravitational pull that light cannot escape and the very fabric of spacetime is warped to the breaking point like a saranwrap trampoline that's had a bowling ball dropped on it.

stephen hawking invented them, or something.

(also: National Basketball Association)



Eastern Conference

Atlantic

Boston Celtics
Brooklyn Nets
New York Knicks
Philadelphia 76ers
Toronto Raptors

Central

Chicago Bulls
Cleveland Cavaliers
Detroit Pistons
Indiana Pacers
Milwaukee Bucks

Southeast

Atlanta Hawks
Charlotte Bobcats
Miami Heat
Orlando Magic
Washington Wizards


Western Conference


Northwest
Denver Nuggets
Minnesota Timberwolves
Oklahoma City Thunder
Portland Trail Blazers
Utah Jazz

Pacific

Golden State Warriors
Los Angeles Clippers
Los Angeles Lakers
Phoenix Suns
Sacramento Kings

Southwest

Dallas Mavericks
Houston Rockets
Memphis Grizzlies
New Orleans Hornets
San Antonio Spurs

(n.) a professional who pretends to be someone else in order to tell a story.

once regarded as having the same low social status as a prostitute, though this is not the case today as prostitutes are becoming more and more appreciated.

Affected with a high degree of intellectual independence; not conforming to standards of thought, speech and action derived by the conformants from study of themselves; at odds with the majority; in short, unusual. It is noteworthy that persons are pronounced mad by officials destitute of evidence that themselves are sane. For illustration, this present (and illustrious) lexicographer is no firmer in the faith of his own sanity than is any inmate of any madhouse in the land; yet for aught he knows to the contrary, instead of the lofty occupation that seems to him to be engaging his powers he may really be beating his hands against the window bars of an asylum and declaring himself Noah Webster, to the innocent delight of many thoughtless spectators.

mushy, often colorful excrescence on the underside of tables

(n.) one who wanks; a tosser.

(also: tosser)

n. The end of night and dawn of dejection. The morning was discovered by a Chaldean astronomer, who, finding his observation of the stars unaccountably interrupted, diligently sought the cause and found it. After several centuries of disputation, morning was generally accepted by the scientific as a reasonable cause of the interruption and a constantly recurrent natural phenomenon.

(also: The Devil's Dictionary)

(also: gambling)

(n.) a tarot character. someone who can see the dirt beneath her feet, and the roots, and the rocks, and the bugs. as a result, she can make very good soup.

An ancient faith having all the certitude of religion and all the mystery of science. The modern Theosophist holds, with the Buddhists, that we live an incalculable number of times on this earth, in as many several bodies, because one life is not long enough for our complete spiritual development; that is, a single lifetime does not suffice for us to become as wise and good as we choose to wish to become. To be absolutely wise and good — that is perfection; and the Theosophist is so keen-sighted as to have observed that everything desirous of improvement eventually attains perfection. Less competent observers are disposed to except cats, which seem neither wiser nor better than they were last year. The greatest and fattest of recent Theosophists was the late Madame Blavatsky, who had no cat.
(also: buddha)
(also: The Devil's Dictionary)

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)

A person austerely censorious of that which he is unable to do or become. In commerce and finance, a member of the Army of Provision.

(n.) a deep story, which, when measured against literal-mindedness, seems a lie (hence the popular use of the term 'myth' to indicate a falsehood). a story children will ask to hear again and again, not because they are stupid or have low standards, but because they are absorbing cultural and existential patterns.

hear my vow,
I reclaim this term 'myth',
here and now!

(also: vow)
(also: oath)

(also: stake-claiming flag)
(also: flag on the moon)

(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)

Bo-gie
/ˈbōɡē/
(Noun)

“Bogie” is a term used by the British during the Revolutionary War used to describe a person perpetrating perilous performances against them.

Example:
“There's a (bogie) shoving melted candle wax up my ass over here!”