it's a big building with generals, but that's not important now

n. The kind of political and social reformer who is more concerned to bring others down to his plane than to lift himself to theirs.

(also: The Devil's Dictionary)

n. A war in which the weapons are words and the wounds punctures in the swim-bladder of self-esteem — a kind of contest in which, the vanquished being unconscious of defeat, the victor is denied the reward of success.

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'Tis said by divers of the scholar-men
That poor Salmasius died of Milton's pen.
Alas! we cannot know if this is true,
For reading Milton's wit we perish too.
(also: The Devil's Dictionary)

(n.) that friendly 1950's fellow living next to ya in your white picket-fence Canadian suburb.
not to be confused with neighbor.

(also: neighbor)
(also: Canadian)

(n.) a mythical being that rises from a moldering grave to drain the life blood of unsuspecting prey; probably inspired by earlier tales of landlords or moochers

the point at which you are most expected to pay attention

that part of eternity dividing the domain of disappointment from the realm of hope.

The art of protecting flat surfaces from the weather and exposing them to the critic.
Formerly, painting and sculpture were combined in the same work: the ancients painted their statues. The only present alliance between the two arts is that the modern painter chisels his patrons.
(also: art)
(also: The Devil's Dictionary)

A popular character in old Italian plays, who imitated with ludicrous incompetence the buffone, or clown, and was therefore the ape of an ape; for the clown himself imitated the serious characters of the play. The zany was progenitor to the specialist in humor, as we to-day have the unhappiness to know him. In the zany we see an example of creation; in the humorist, of transmission. Another excellent specimen of the modern zany is the curate, who apes the rector, who apes the bishop, who apes the archbishop, who apes the devil.
(also: The Devil's Dictionary)

The natural rock upon which is reared the Temple of Law.
(also: humans)
(also: The Devil's Dictionary)

(n.) a small tree able to be held between two fingers, used to scrape leftovers from between your teeth or debris from other hard-to-reach spaces.

... usually it is considered a bad idea to do both with the same toothpick.

(356 -– 323 BC) – King of Macedonia and military leader.
(also: 100 most influential people in the world)
(also: alexander the great quotes)

here's my hot take*: what's moral isn't always legal, what's legal isn't always moral.

legality and morality have a venn-diagram relationship, you know. they might mostly overlap, but dear god, please don't confuse one for the other. society's good at a lot of things, but accounting for nuanced situations through legal code.. is, uh, not one of them.
be your own pillar of strength and morality. be accountable to yourself. you know when you are crossing those lines, and you know it will backfire -- not necessarily because someone comes to punish you directly, but because what comes up must go down. and you need to know that when you transgress, you can make amends and redeem yourself. not because some legal system tells you 'pay $10000 or a year in prison or whatever, and it will make the situation better', but because you have learned and you have changed.

* /s, it's not even that hot.. but people act like what's legal is moral & vice versa with such conviction sometimes.

(also: normal vs moral)

The god of the world's leading religion. The chief temple is in the holy city of New York.

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He swore that all other religions were gammon,
And wore out his knees in the worship of Mammon.
—Jared Oopf
(also: the devils dictionary)

(n) not a man at all, but a rapey alligator, dressed like jimmy buffett if jimmy had taken bath salts and pcp before breaking into a hardee's for a greasy burger. see (also: matt gaetz)

Self imposed torture to gain more knowledge in an area just to fail miserably the very next day on the test

n. The body of a primitive people's beliefs concerning its origin, early history, heroes, deities and so forth, as distinguished from the true accounts which it invents later.
(also: The Devil's Dictionary)

the bit of eastern europe that is least likely to be confused for russia. known today for being that place dracula and crappy cars come from

A planet in the Milky Way galaxy. It is the home of unique organizations of energy dependent cells that like to reproduce themselves exponentially through both sexual and asexual reproduction. Many such "organisms" consist of a mouth, an anus, and a stomach system. Other features are numerous and diverse, but all help these animated conglomerations of material in their never ending quest to unsustainably gobble energy-latent objects in their environment while producing an iterated and highly-particular stream of waste products. The planet is named after the original creatures with this body plan, the worm.

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