I: proper name:
the center of the known universe.

"I don't do Windows": phrase:
Macintosh owners' mantra.

IRA: abbrev.:
a real killer of a place to invest your money.

Iambic pentameter: n.:
the dialect spoken by Shakespearian actors.

Iatrogenic: adj.:
caused by the action of a doctor: as iatrogenic injury, from mistake or malpractice; iatrogenic disease, caught in the hospital; or iatrogenic penury, from lapse of health insurance.
Not applicable to hypochondria, which is caused by the existence of doctors.

Ice cream: n.:
the desirable nutritive component of milk.

Ideologue: n.:
appointee by the other party.

Ideology: n.:
a body of beliefs, values, priorities advanced by the other side.

Idiom: n.:
ideophonic idiosyncrasy.

Idiosyncrasy: n.:
eccentricity in someone with status.

Idiot: n.:
anyone stupider than my in-laws.

Idle: adj.:
not currently making money.
The Idle Rich do not need to make money -- they have people to do that for them; the Idle Poor can't make money -- either they can't get jobs or the cost of keeping the job is as great as the pay.

Idolatry: n.:
fandom not condoned by my church.

"If we can send a man to the moon . . .": plaint:
when we sent men to the moon, the players and decision makers were engineers, technicians and scientists, and the bean counters were not in charge. The players in your pet project are lawyers, politicians and activists and they spend dollars to manage cents worth of useful applications.

"If you're so rich, why ain't you smart?": saying:
a national question derived from observation of American foreign policy.

"If you're so smart, why aren't you rich?": saying:
question from someone who read and actually believed The Bell Curve.
For the record, they are completely different skill sets.

Ignoramus: n.:
member of the largest subclass of the human species.

Ignorance: n.:
a stubborn refusal to embrace beliefs that I hold strongly.

Ill-advised: adj.:
inclined to act in a manner contrary to my interests.

Illusion: n.:
something that is not what it seems, as when a lawyer seems to speak candidly to the jury, or a politician seems to hold certain popular views or values.

Illusory: adj.:
all smoke and no fire, as the violence in exhibition wrestling, or the relief you are likely to get from the newest tax reduction bill.

Illustration: n.:
what must be provided when the answer to "do I have to draw you a picture?" is "yes."

Illustrative: adj.:
showing my position in its best and most acceptable light.

Image: n.:
false image.

Imagination: n.:
the father of invention.

Immediately: adv.:
eventually.

Immoral: adj.:
unwilling to abide by my moral values.

Immortal: adj.:
having built a reputation, or a fortune, large and strong enough to last more than one generation after one's death.

Immortality: n.:
cancer of the whole body; the reward for a life of self-punishment, as promised by all Western religions.

Impairment: n.:
a decrease in ability to function in driving, created by alcohol and used as justification for magic numbers in drunk-driving laws. Decrease in ability to function in driving due to paraplegia, quadriplegia, infirmity, prescription drugs, hearing loss, or using a cellular phone is not to be considered as impairment.

Imperceptible: adj.:
demonstrating the salient characteristic of the typical non-executive pay raise.

Imply: v.t.:
accuse by indirection, when you don't have evidence to support the accusation or are afraid to make it openly and risk the reply.

Impolite: adj.:
inconvenient to me.

Important: n.:
self-important.

Imposing: adj.:
big; occasionally, expensive.

Impossible: adj.:

1. sufficiently inconvenient that I'm disinclined to do it.
   
2. beyond my understanding of how to do it.

Impoverished: adj.:
facing the morning of April 16.

Impractical: adj.:
requiring that I give up some of my authority, autonomy or wealth.

Impregnable: adj.:
on the Pill.

Impressionable: adj.:
susceptible to the wiles of the opposition.
Susceptibility to my side's wiles is, of course, acumen; or maturity, if in reference to the young.

Improper: adj.:
held, espoused, maintained or practiced by the other side.

Impromptu: adj.:
performed without rehearsal, sometimes even without a script.

Improvisation: n.:
"This isn't the way this was supposed to happen."

Improvise: v.i.:
if you don't know it, dazzle them with your fancy footwork.

Impure: adj.:
the condition of food and drink before the Government interceded to protect our precious bodily fluids, or of thoughts enticed by things not sanctioned by the church.

In God We Trust: motto:
everyone else has let us down.
Jean Shepard finishes it: "all others pay cash."

"In like Flynn": phrase:
securely placed, comfortable, and contented; a tribute to the prowess of a Depression-era movie star.

In spite of: phrase:
"This isn't what I intended to happen."

In The Mood: phrase:
favorite song and sentiment of the 40's.
The baby boom happened in the 40's.

Inane: adj.:
ready for prime-time.

Inauguration: n.:
a formal occasion derived from the old Roman practice of divining the future by putting their hands into the innards of sacrificed animals. The current practice is more in the nature of putting their hands into our soon-to-be-sacrificed wallets.

Incense: v.t.:
get right up my nose.

Incest: n.:
sibling revelry; a sport the whole family can enjoy.
Traditionally, the regional pastime of the Ozarks and Appalachia.
Remember: the family that lays together stays together -- generation after generation.

Inch: v.i.:
move one-ninth of the distance it would take to please a lady.

Income tax: n.:
a scheme that adds the burden of caring for the non-productive to that of keeping a job.

Incompatibility: n.:
motivation of the office wife; job description of the lady of the evening.

Inconceivable: adj.:
post-vasectomy.

Incongruous: adj.:
composed of inharmonious elements.
Derived with minor respelling from "In Congress Assembled. . . ."

Inconsistent: adj.:
the nature of behavior in the absence of rationality.
For example, TV news programs show rear views of nudists, but bleep the word "ass" from an interview with an athlete.

Incorrigible: adj.:
(too) easily encouraged.

Increase: n.:
growth: the mode of change of taxation, regulation, population, pollution, waistline, cancer, heart-disease rate and other indicators of civilization.
Growth is the sine qua non of business philosophy.

Incumbent: n.:
the candidate whose hand already knows the way into the till.

Indecent: adj.:
enticing; exciting; interesting.

Indecision: n.:
the mechanism by which we protect ourselves from having to take responsibility for the consequences of making errors of commission; the preferred path to procrastination.

Independence: n.:
the state of having forsworn allegiance and abrogated debt.

Independent: adj.:
having concealed allegiances.

Indifference: n.:
that emotion engendered in us by others' suffering.

Indigenous: adj.:
pertaining to those people living in an area before it was discovered by humans.

Inert: adj.:
exhibiting the degree of ambition and animation of a brother-in-law.

Inexorable: adj.:
out of my control.

Inevitable: adj.:
fairly likely.

Infantry: n.:
the part of the army that marches on its stomach, especially into combat.

Infer: v.t.:
imply.
Infer and its complement imply were equated in the notorious Merriam-Webster's New International Unabridged Dictionary, Third Edition, igniting a holy war between Prescriptivists and Descriptivists.

Infinity: n.:

1. the next number larger than the largest countable number;
   hence, any number too large to visualize, like the number of grains of sand, the number of stars, the number of dollars in the National Debt.
   
2. a brand of car that gained notoriety by the artifice of having their introductory series of commercials not show the product.
   The ads were artistically and tastefully done and therefore stood out sharply from their competition.

Inflammatory rhetoric: n.:
fundamental programming content of C-Span, where it alternates with soporific bombast.
Liberals believe that speech incites violence, but not sex, while conservatives hold to the opposite view.

Inflation: n.:
Economy's disincentive for hiding money away in banks.

Influenza: n.:
debilitating, sometimes fatal, disease named for its similarity of symptoms and effect to the effect on the Body Politic of influence peddling. From the Italian.

Information: n.:
misinformation; disinformation. The government relies on peoples' belief "if it's in black and white, it's right" to make it work.
Forunately, weather forecasters have broken the public of the belief that anything from a computer must be true and exact.

Information age: n.:
usually just far enough out of date to be less than completely useful.

Information Superhighway: n.:

1. unfortunate metaphor for electronic publishing.
   To extend the metaphor, most of the populace are using horse and buggy and just discovering bicycles; a fourth of them haven't mastered shoes yet.
   
2. the road less travelled.
   The New Age Bypass, aka the Misinformation Superhighway, gets the bulk of the traffic and nearly all of the press, which it shares with the Disinformation Alternate Route — the one that winds down among the bullrushes.

Informed electorate: n.:

1. the voting citizens of Utopia.
   
2. the worst nightmare of the professional politician and his campaign manager.

Informed sources: n.:
people who are ashamed to have their names attached to the drivel they're feeding the press.

Inlaw: n.:
one related by marriage and therefore not of significance for determining genetic relationship patterns, except in the Bible Belt.

Insane: adj.:
unable to tell right from wrong, but not currently holding office.
The general populace consists primarily of those who are dangerously insane and those who are not dangerous.

Inscrutable: adj.:
having the dastardly ability to act in other ways than I think I would in the same predicament.

Insecure: adj.:
unwilling to accept responsibility for their own values and opinions, so that they must justify themselves by declaring their tastes to be constants of the Universe.

Insensible: n.:
exhibiting the same empathy as does the conservative to the sufferings of the poor.

Insensitive: adj.:

1. (of a male) incapable of reading (usually female) minds.
   
2. unwilling to take on, emulate, or pander to the neuroses of another.

Insight: n.:
legal inside information.

Insomnia: n.:
a medical condition easily treated by adminstration of a State of the Union address or its Opposition rebuttal.

Insurance: n.:
a legal game of chance where the house gets to set the bets and make up the rules.
Insurance companies set rates based on the number of accidents, then refuse to insure the 10 percent of people who are responsible for 50 percent of the accidents.
It's hard to feel sorry for the tribulations of an industry that can spend billions of dollars a year on advertising, pay sizable dividends to its holders, then weep that regulation makes it impossible for them to be profitable.

Intellectual rights: n.:
a tautology: any discussion of rights is pretty much an intellectual exercise, divorced from the real world.

Intelligence: n.:
ability to score high on a test designed to predict how successful one would be likely to be in the turn-of-the-century French Civil Service and updated to include conformance with white American cultural norms.

Intelligent: adj.:
bright enough to agree with me.

Intelligentsia: n.:
a class who think that because they spend all their time playing with words they have the right to control the definitions.

Intemperate: adj.:
tending to act before I have time to make up my mind about how it should be done.

Intensity: n.:
that property that distinguishes the great from the good, the devotee from the dilettante.
Intensity is perhaps the most difficult trait for the actor to simulate.

Intensive care: n.:
expensive care.

Interest: n.:

1. the ability to hold attention.
   
2. the ability to draw the attention of bankers.

Interest rate: n.:
the tool used to balance supply and demand in the money markets. It is a tool with all the precision and delicacy of a bulldozer.

Interfere: v.i.:
create noise and suppress intelligible content.

Interference: n.:
activity that does not forward my goals.

Internalize: v.t.:
treat in accordance with Stout's "Anglo-Saxon Theory of Emotions and Dessert":
freeze them and hide them in the belly.

Internet: proper name:
the hose that will fuel the Information Revolution; or extinguish it.
Its reputation, if not its shape, is extraordinarily hyperbolic.

Interpret: v.t.:
change the language, or the meaning of.
Often said of a judge's actions toward the law or the Constitution.

Interview: n.:
the journalist's revenge on the prominent and powerful.

Intestine: n.:
that region of the body where we thoughtfully convert our food into sustenance for plants.

Intimidate: v.t.:
teach the facts of life.

Intolerable: adj.:
mildly inconveniencing or vaguely offensive.

Intolerance: n.:

1. a really good movie;
   
2. a really bad social policy.

Intolerant: adj.:
exhibiting the love, caring and empathy characteristic of any Western religion.

Intransigent: adj.:
unwilling to accept the generous compromise I have offered.

Introspection: n.:
a period of observation in the most interesting and important of surroundings.

Invention: n.:
the daughter of Necessity and Imagination; exalted patroness of Culture.

Inventory: n.:
a mysterious demon that sits on shelves in the warehouse and steals profits from the company that has evoked it.

Inverse: adj.:
a relation between two things such that, as one becomes greater, the other becomes lesser, e.g., the relationship between competence and confidence.

Inversion layer: n.:
Mother Nature's attempt to put a lid on an area to keep the pollution inside and away from the non-polluters outside.

Irate: adj.:
adjectival form pertaining to the occupants of the Emerald Isle and their descendants.

Ireland: proper name:
the nation named for an emotion.

Irony: n.:
when Fate sucker punches you.

Irrelevant: adj.:
not in support of my position.

Irresponsible: adj.:
acting after the fashion of the Press dealing with an important story that has no fast-breaking information to carry it through its obligatory daily exposure.

Irreverent: adj.:
not inclined to show adequate respect for me or my positions.

Isolate: v.t.:
a time-honored verb which the medical research community made into a noun.
The International Standards Organization has now extended the word's range to include adjective; 9000 times an adjective.

Iteration: n.:
the act of applying a mathematical operation to an initial condition, then, repeatedly, to the result of the previous operation, until a desired result can be achieved. In mathematics, this is an algorithm; in Florida, it is called an AlGore-ithm.

Itinerary: n.:
schedule for a travelogue.

Ivory tower: n.:
an institution, expensive, delicate, beautiful and utterly lacking utility in or ability to withstand the workaday world.