only the best toy ever if you grew up in the 80s and 90s

in 1981, honorable japanese toy company takara released "diaclone," a line of toy robots that could be twisted and folded into nifty futuristic vehicles. one of their corporate samurai got the very original idea to market a line of these car-robot toys to horrible american children (probably because tonka and milton-bradley was already doing that with gobots and robotix), and also got the bright idea to make new ones modeled on real cars such as the formidable Toyota Land Cruiser, and the Volkswagon Beetle (called "the people's car" by adolf hitler himself)

to achieve this they sold the license for these "transformers" to the execs of american toy company hasbro, who decided to advertise their new cash cow with a crappy 80s cartoon and a marvel tie-in comic. the transformers were a smash hit; through the 80s you could always tell whose parents were rich enough to afford them (or at least, had formerly been rich before buying them). naturally they were so successful that hasbro has made every effort to run the franchise into the ground with a new cartoon every decade or so, plus letting michael bay make a series of porno movies that happen to occasionally feature transformers.

Rich people without money

The First Person of the literary Trinity, the Second and Third being Custom and Conventionality. Imbued with a decent reverence for this Holy Triad an industrious writer may hope to produce books that will live as long as the fashion.
(also: The Devil's Dictionary)

(v.) the act of desperately trying to salvage a plan that has gone horribly awry

(n.) the shorthand way of saying television.

that we even need a shorthand version of such a trivial word is indicative of how this invention has damaged us as a society.

(n.) East Asian culture fetish; when weeabooism goes too far

The opposite of noise

(also: noise)

a ludicrous idea that some people had to explain the creation of the universe. you would think if the universe were an egg it would be healthier for us.

A type of monkey that have anxiety

n. One who peddles ready-made emotion, and who, despising us for the qualities upon which he feeds, is by us despised for the unwholesome character of his diet. See STICK.


(also: The Devil's Dictionary)

(v.) stepping outside one's familiar reality, using nothing but your own half-blind, bootstrapped wits.
https://slatestarcodex.com/2015/04/21/universal-love-said-the-cactus-person/

(also: humility)
(also: the fool)

The act of reminding people of the horrible things they already knew, allowing you slight relief from the guilt of doing nothing about it yourself.

adj. Addicted to rhetoric.
(also: rhetoric)
(also: the devil's dictionary)

when u hate the world, insturance that u don't turn your back at everyone, that you are nice to whoever they are - a training

Something given in expectation of something better. Today's payment for to-morrow's service.
(also: The Devil's Dictionary)

A lowly virtue whereby mediocrity achieves an inglorious success.

---

"Persevere, persevere!" cry the homilists all,
Themselves, day and night, persevering to bawl.
"Remember the fable of tortoise and hare —
The one at the goal while the other is — where?"
Why, back there in Dreamland, renewing his lease
Of life, all his muscles preserving the peace,
The goal and the rival forgotten alike,
And the long fatigue of the needless hike.
His spirit a-squat in the grass and the dew
Of the dogless Land beyond the Stew,
He sleeps, like a saint in a holy place,
A winner of all that is good in a race.
—Sukker Uffro

A creature thoughtfully created to supply occasion for the following lines by the illustrious Ambat Delaso:

---

TO MY PET TORTOISE

My friend, you are not graceful — not at all;
Your gait's between a stagger and a sprawl.

Nor are you beautiful: your head's a snake's
To look at, and I do not doubt it aches.

As to your feet, they'd make an angel weep.
'Tis true you take them in whene'er you sleep.

No, you're not pretty, but you have, I own,
A certain firmness — mostly you're backbone.

Firmness and strength (you have a giant's thews)
Are virtues that the great know how to use —

I wish that they did not; yet, on the whole,
You lack — excuse my mentioning it — Soul.

So, to be candid, unreserved and true,
I'd rather you were I than I were you.

Perhaps, however, in a time to be,
When Man's extinct, a better world may see

Your progeny in power and control,
Due to the genesis and growth of Soul.

So I salute you as a reptile grand
Predestined to regenerate the land.

Father of Possibilities, O deign
To accept the homage of a dying reign!

In the far region of the unforeknown
I dream a tortoise upon every throne.

I see an Emperor his head withdraw
Into his carapace for fear of Law;

A King who carries something else than fat,
Howe'er acceptably he carries that;

A President not strenuously bent
On punishment of audible dissent —

Who never shot (it were a vain attack)
An armed or unarmed tortoise in the back;

Subjects and citizens that feel no need
To make the March of Mind a wild stampede;

All progress slow, contemplative, sedate,
And "Take your time" the word, in Church and State.

O Tortoise, 'tis a happy, happy dream,
My glorious testudinous régime!

I wish in Eden you'd brought this about
By slouching in and chasing Adam out.
(also: god)
(also: The Devil's Dictionary)

a Jewish religious official who performs pediatric surgery

An implement, madam, to whose Latin name, jugum, we owe one of the most illuminating words in our language — a word that defines the matrimonial situation with precision, point and poignancy. A thousand apologies for withholding it.
(also: voke)
(also: The Devil's Dictionary)

There are a number of theories as to the ultimate cause which brought the universe into existence.

personally, i prefer to believe we were laid by an unimaginably vast chicken as a cosmic egg, and in honor of that, the egg is to be worshiped. will our souls ascend to a grand new state of being in the divine hatching, or will we be burned in the eternally frying pan of damnation?