the meat of mass entertainment.
PAC: n.:
either a boot or a political pressure group.
With continued use, they tend to develop similarly attractive
odors.
The Supreme Court has declared that PACs have the same
constitutional rights as citizens. No one has dared to suggest that
PACs might also have similar responsibilities to private citizens.
Pablum: n.:
the meat of mass entertainment.
Pacifism: n.:
a philosophy that can only endure under the protection of a
government with a strong military.
Pad: v.t.:
write down; as pad an expense account.
Paid political announcement: n.:
Lullaby of Broadcast.
Pain: n.:
the gauge we use to determine that we are still alive.
Pale: adj.:
lacking in color; white. Hence, outside the pale for being beyond
the protection of the law.
Pan: proper name:
the original "old goat."
Pan: v.t.:
describe in the same glowing terms used by theater critics to
describe any production they can't understand.
Panhandle: v.i.:
reach out and put the touch on someone.
Panic: v.i.:
"When in trouble, or in doubt, run in circles, scream and shout."
The state of mind experienced by bureaucrats when faced by anything unexpected.
Parable: n.:
a lie in fable's clothing.
Paradigm: n.:
dogma.
Paradox: n.:
a buzzword used to disguise my inability to see the relationship between two things.
Paragon: n.:
larger-than-life figure, usually with the feet of clay covered and
hidden.
Paramilitary: adj.:
adapting military training and tactics, but not military justice or
restraint.
Paramilitary organization: n.:
an army no nation will claim.
Parasite: n.:
a creature bearing the same relationship to its host as a lawyer to his client.
Parasitism: n.:
the ecological relation of a government to its populace, or of the
human race to the rest of the biosphere.
Parent: n.:
one who has chosen to shirk the responsibilities of raising children.
Pari-mutuel: n.:
gallop poll.
Parkinson's disease: n.:
[bureaucracy] Parkinson's law.
Parkinson's Law: n.:
the staff expands to exceed the budget; the accomplishments do not expand.
Parliament: n.:
the inspiration for the story of the Tower of Babel.
Parliamentary Procedure: n.:
a body of rules compiled from observation of the activities of
unsupervised playtime at kindergarten and of the feeding frenzies
of sharks.
Parole: n.:
half-time in the going-to-prison game.
Partisan: adj.:
your side's selfish position.
Partisan: n.:
Soldier without a barracks.
Party discipline: n.:
lampshades will not be worn as hats, clothing will remain decent
in the main room, and no one except the entertainment committee
is allowed to spike the punchbowl.
Party of the first part: n.:
on the occasion of baby's first haircut.
Passive restraint: n.:
the product of the consumer advocates' conclusion that the average
driver is an ineducable dolt; enshrined in law by a Congress that
has the same belief.
Passover: n.:
the holy day on which the Jews celebrate the death of a generation
of Egyptian firstborn children.
Pastoral: adj.:
pertaining to either preachers or pastures.
The point of commonality seems to be between the contents of sermons and the
ordinary contaminants of pastures.
Paternalistic: adj.:
maternalistic.
Patient: n.:
client of a physician.
So named in recognition of the personality trait most required in dealing with physician's appointment schedules.
Have you ever noticed that they deliberately call it a "waiting room?"
Patriot: n.:
newspeak for traitor.
Patriotism: n.:
first refuge of a member of a Republican administration.
Patron: n.:
one who has at least paid for the right to be patronizing.
Pawn: n.:
the crucial player in the conflicts between occupants of the seats of
power: pawns are the cannon fodder of symbolic wars.
Pawn: v.t.:
sell an article, frequently not of one's ownership, for a drastically
reduced price, on the pretext that it is merely security for a short
loan and will soon be redeemed.
Peace: n.:
that stage of war that is prosecuted by diplomats and merchants
rather than by soldiers and artillery.
Peacock: n.:
bird that dresses like a drag queen.
Pearls before swine: phrase:
practical priority for evacuating a burning house.
Peccadillo: n.:
a minor or conventional sin, especially of the kind that elicits a
"nudge, nudge, wink, wink" reaction from nonparticipants.
Peckerwood: n.:
obsolete spelling of Packwood.
Pecs: n.:
body-building slang for the muscles that give a weight lifter a bigger bust than his girl friend.
Pederast: n.:
unabbreviated spelling of "priest."
Pedophilia: n.:
love of children.
Peeping Tom: proper name:
president of the Coventry branch of the Godiva fan club.
Peeping tom: n.:
dream date for a female exhibitionist.
Peignoir: n.:
a loose woman's morning dress.
Pejorate: v.t.:
to make a speech about the other side's position.
Pejorative: adj.:
having the property of making things worse.
Pell-mell: adv.:
As highly structured and organized as the final two weeks of a
congressional session.
Penicillin: n.:
medical marvel and wonder drug of the '50s, cattle feed of the '70s,
public health menace of the '90s.
A full career by anyone's standards.
Penile: adj.:
pertaining to a system of punishment and oppression, according to feminists.
Penile dementia: n.:
the ultimate outcome of too much playing of "mine is bigger than yours."
Penis envy: n.:
the emotion that motivates Viagra sales.
Penitent: adj.:
showing the proper response for having hurt my feelings.
Penitentiary: n.:
seminary of incarceration.
A place to regret having been caught.
Pentagon papers: n.:
computer printouts that cost $374 per ream.
Penury: n.:
the natural state of the governed.
Peon: n.:
underling. So named from the treatment he can expect from his employer.
People: v.t.:
populate a region by exterminating or enslaving the natives and
replacing them with your own folk.
Peppery: adj.:
pushy, loud and obnoxious.
Per cent: n.:
an arithmetic concept that we all supposedly learned in grade
school, heavily misused by pseudoscientists because everyone
thinks they understand it and it sounds mathematical.
For example:
Perfect: adj:
the way I like it.
Perfect: v.t.:
improve marginally, as a product or process.
Perfidy: n.:
criticism, by a friend.
Performance: n.:
ability to accomplish.
Performance art: n.:
self-indulgence of the attention-starved.
If, as Bayans holds, minimalism is the Anorexia of the "fine arts," then surely performance art is its Bulimia.
Perjury: n.:
sworn testimony by an Administration official.
Perpetual motion machine: n.:
a bit of technological mythology, popularly embodied in the Energizer®
bunny, probably inspired by observation of the oral action of politicians.
Persecution: n.:
the price of being different.
Persecution is the action of a mob, acting jointly or severally, or of a power bloc not reasonably distinguishable from a mob.
Person: n.:
a human of unspecified gender; not to be confused with a human of indeterminate gender, who is not to be considered a person under a conservative administration.
Personal: adj.:
my business, and none of yours.
Personality: n.:
a character that women attribute to girls they don't think are good looking.
Personification: n.:
pasting the attributes of humans onto animals and inanimate
objects; the lingua franca of the Disney studios.
Perspective: n.:
something that is not taught by a church that teaches that both
masturbation and murder are mortal sins, equal in the eyes of the
church and of God.
Perverse: adj.:
impishly committed to being in the wrong.
Pervert: n.:
a scoundrel who has the nerve to do things I only dare to read about.
Perverted: adj.:
sexually creative.
Kinky is stimulating your lover with a feather; perverted is using
the whole chicken.
Pessimistic: adj.:
having the belief that this is the best of all possible worlds. cf. Optimistic.
Pet: n.:
head-of-household child surrogate.
Pet rock: n.:
cultural icon of the 70s, celebrating the vivacity and initiative of
the career bureaucrat.
Petard: n.:
French for bootstrap; that which you are hoist by your own.
Phallic: adj.:
the shape of things to come.
Phallus: n.:
the staff of life, especially to adolescents.
Phallusy: n.:
feminist myth; the falsity that has launched a thousand polemics.
Philanderer: n.:
a benefactor who loves his fellow persons.
Philanthropic: adj.:
gay.
Philanthropy: n.:
the cream of human kindness.
Philistine: n.:
one whose esthetic values are different from mine.
Philosophy: n.:
love of sophistry; addiction to the adventure of exploring the
reaches of ones own mind.
Phlebotomist: n.:
bipedal medicinal leech.
Phone: n.:
nickname for the modern Slavemaster.
Phony: adj.:
demostrating the veracity, integrity and truthfulness of my opponent.
Phylism: n.:
the belief that one phylum, usually animals, is more worthy of
protection and consideration than the others.
Pick of the litter: n. phrase:
bag lady's lunch.
Pickup: n.:
the natural leader among the species Automobile.
This can be seen by the lines of lesser automobiles to be found behind them on the highways.
Many pickups seem to have been subjected to a medical procedure
that left them surgically attached to the left lane.
"A picture is worth a thousand words": aphorism:
prophetic prediction of the bandwidth problems of the Internet.
Piety: n.:
the state of living as though confounded by the belief that one's
All-knowing All-seeing God cannot know the content of one's
heart, unless that heart is worn openly and ostentatiously on the
sleeve.
Pinch runner: n.:
lady's souvenir of her trip to Rome or Athens.
Pious: adj.:
professing devotion to God.
Usually, professing devotion greater than yours.
Pissant: n.:
a small ant found around latrines used by diabetics.
Pissing contest: n.:
negative political campaign.
The idea is to see which candidate can have the greater impact on the electorate.
Pit stop: n.:
an event in auto racing where a team can service a race car in
about the same amount of time it takes a candidate to change his
position on the issues.
Plagiarism: n.:
lazy research.
To copy from one is considered plagiarism; to copy from many is considered research.
Plagiarize: v.i.:
enjoy the butter without having had to work the churn.
Plague: n.:
any serious disease that lends itself to being blamed on the victims.
Planned obsolescence: n.:
the twenty-second amendment.
Plastic surgery: n.:
cosmetic medical procedures intended to make the recipient look
as though made of plastic.
Platonic: adj.:
the nature of a May-September romance: play for May, tonic for September.
Playing God: v. phrase:
taking an action or making a decision of which I disapprove,
especially in regard to the survival, well-being or wealth of
someone of whom I approve.
It is noteworthy that the term is used only in the pejorative and
primarily to refer to actions (or inactions) which result in death or
loss. Those who preach that God is Love and that God gives life
never use the term to refer to, for example, heroic life-prolonging
measures.
Pleasure: n.:
gratification.
Pledge of Allegiance: n.:
allegation of loyalty.
Plug and Play: phrase:
computer industry misspelling; properly, "Plug in and Pray."
Plural: adj.:
consisting of one or more, e.g., die/dice, data, media, deer, fish.
For some reason, Americans seem unable to deal with plurals that
are formed other than by the addition of -s at the end of the word,
using plurals as singular, or, as in the case of die/dice,
interchangeably. This problem is primarily of interest to anal
retentives.
Plutocrat: n.:
successful capitalist.
Poetry: n.:
a literary form intended to appeal to emotion rather than to intelligence.
This is called making a virtue of necessity.
Poland: proper name:
a nation saddled with a stereotyped image of rampant moronity.
Not to be confused with Poll-land, the Columbian home of professional morons.
Polemics: n.:
the language of American common law, and the politics that
American common lawyers go in for.
Police brutality: n.:
"They arrested me!"
Political asylum: n.:
legislature.
Tragically, the inmates are in charge of this one.
Political bazaar: n.:
metaphorical marketplace of the politically bizarre; where you go
to buy politicians.
Political capital: n.:
slush fund.
Political conscience: n.:
what a legislator votes in accordance with, i.e., the commands of
his campaign contibutors.
Political contribution: n.:
lease payment.
Political correctness: n.:
a modern aberration which imposes on the productive the neuroses
and phobias of those who are not.
Political party: n.:
how your congressman spends his leftover campaign funds.
Political science: n.:
the only kind that gets time on the Evening News.
Politically correct: n.:
intellectually incorrect.
Political correctness is the Left's attempt to abuse power through
censorship in response to the Right's obscenity laws.
Polling place: n.:
locale of voting, named after the practice of removing the horns
from cattle to make them more tractable.
Pollution: n.:
That index by which an industrial nation measures its superiority
over simpler, lesser societies.
Pollyanna: proper name:
the President's principal speechwriter.
Polygamy: n.:
polygyny.
Any of the forms where there are multiple husbands are unmentionable in American English.
Polymorphously perverse: adj.:
Freud's sesquipedalian way of affirming the folk wisdoms that
"opposites attract" and "like draws to like", both at once.
Pompous: adj.:
having the public manner of a campaigning politician, televangelist or boxing promoter.
Pork barrel: n.:
favored dining locale of the well-connected.
Pornography: n.:
how-to manuals for the sexually repressed.
Or, how-not-to manuals, for the really repressed.
Portentous: adj.:
pretentious.
Posthaste: adv.:
a modern single-word oxymoron.
Postal: adj.:
pertaining to the mails, as US Postal Service.
From the latin for "after" or "later than."
Pot of Gold: n.:
a traditional phrase recognizing the street value of sensamilla, charas, or even reasonable ganja.
Potential: n.:
unrealized possibility; generally cast as a burden of expectation.
Poverty: n.:
the natural condition of the governed.
Power-hungry: adj.:
prepared to run for office. Or for God, if you can afford the air time.
Power-mad: adj.:
aspiring to a latenight talkshow slot.
Power of attorney: n.:
a formal and legal license to steal.
Power of the purse: n.:
whoever holds the purse gets to wield the power.
A method used by Congress to get around the Constitution.
Practical: adj.:
against Company Policy.
Prayer: n.:
request for divine intervention.
Interestingly, these are most commonly formed in the imperative.
Preacher: n.:
one whose profession is "do as I say, not as I do."
Predator: n.:
an animal that makes its living by killing: e.g., the wolf, the hawk,
the shark, the tiger.
What boardroom parasites prefer to call themselves.
Prejudice: n.:
having the answer before you understand the question.
Prejudiced: adj.:
espousing an opinion contrary to my own.
Premature: adj.:
in advance of my schedule; earlier than I wanted.
Premium: n.:
bribe.
Premium: adj.:
of superior quality.
Preparasite: n.:
one which consumes resources to prepare to fight the last war;
commonly found in the Pentagon and similar environs.
Preppie: n.:
member of the what's-in-it-for Me generation.
Prescriptivist: n.:
one who believes that natural law is something decreed, dictated or negotiated to control the behavior of people or things.
Typically a lawyer, politician, theologian or social scientist.
Contrast Descriptivist.
President: n.:
American English for "king."
Press: n.:
an agency that fervently believes in the constitutional prohibition
on abridging freedom of the press, alone of the Bill of Rights.
Pressure group: n.:
an advocacy group aligned with a cause that I don't support.
Prevaricate: n.:
make a public statement.
Preventive detention: n.:
in a democracy, everyone is presumed innocent until arrested.
Priapism: n.:
a medical condition which proves that you can get too much of a good thing.
Price: n.:
an economic property of an item or service that is tenuously related to its value.
The difference is highlighted in an observation by Wilde: "What is a cynic? A man who knows the price of everything, and the value of nothing."
Priest: n.:
Roman for pedophile.
Primary: adj.:
most significant or important, except in regard to elections.
Primary: n.:
an election so characterized because most of the candidates act like
fugitives from grade school.
Primary colors: noun phrase:
green, carefully camouflaged by Red, White and Blue.
Primate: n.:
ecclesiastical governor, especially in a tax-supported church.
Customarily found in the posture of denying that he is a primate.
Prime rate: n.:
house odds on the economy.
Prime rib: n.:
a vegan's idea of Hell; the carnivore's vision of Heaven.
Prime time: n.:
the hours most valuable to TV programmers: the slow hours after
dinner when the family avidly attend the tube to avoid having to
listen to each other.
Primitive: adj.:
deficient in the civilized amenities, such as freeways, airports,
industrial pollution, government databases, telephone solicitors,
lawyers . . . .
Prince: n.:
disenchanted frog.
Principal: n.:
what a politician cultivates in lieu of an ethically superior
commodity of similar pronunciation.
Principle: n.:
template for the application of conscience; the foundation on
which morality or ethicality must be built if they are to endure.
Principle traditionally draws much less interest than principal.
Prior restraint: n.:
censorship by intimidation, rather than by accountable action; the
prig's fondest dream, as it is of the tyrant.
Prison term: n.:
the interval between conviction and parole.
For most crimes except drug possession, this will be slightly shorter than the
interval between arrest and conviction.
Privacy: n.:
in imposition designed to interfere with the rights of the state and
of business to know everything they want to about you.
Private: adj.:
restricted from inspection without the owner's permission, except
by government and the police.
Private eye: n.:
Peeping Tom for hire.
Privy: n.:
the little house behind the big house, covering a hole in the ground topped by one or more holes in a board. About a hundred feet back, which would be about a hundred feet too near in the summer and about a hundred feet too far in the winter. Preferably located downwind.
Privy council: n.:
the Presidential Cabinet.
So named in honor of the delicate aroma attendant on the results of their proceedings.
Pro bono: phrase:
for the good of the appearance.
Pro-life: adj.:
anti-sex; anti-liberty; pro-military; pro-death penalty. They are
pro-pursuit-of-happiness only so long as the method of pursuit
meets with their personal approval.
Probate: n.:
an evil that men do that lives on after them.
Where there's a will, there's ill will.
Probation: n.:
the minor-leagues of criminal sentencing.
Probe: v.t.:
stick the nose into.
Problem: n.:
opportunity in disguise.
Sometimes the disguise is too good to see through.
PRoblem: n.:
a situation that can be bent by the media to fit their image of impending catastrophe.
Problematical: n.:
too complex for one of my glib answers.
Process server: n.:
a bottom feeder in the attorney pool.
Processor: n.:
mangler; scrambler; as word processor, data processor, food processor.
Procrastinate: v.i.:
participate in Mankind's oldest and best developed sport.
Procrastination: n.:
optimistic application of the Ostrich Principle: maybe, if I ignore
it, it will go away.
Procreation: n.:
the principal hazard of mankind's oldest recreation.
Proctologist: n.:
medical professional whose job description is much the same as
that of the Washington bureau chief for a news service: he spends
his day looking up assholes.
Proctor: n.:
collegian in charge of enforcing rules; from the same root as proctologist.
Profanity: n.:
the lingua franca of physical labor.
Program: n.:
the set of instructions that tell a computer how not to do what we want it to.
Progress: n.:
the process by which we rise from simple and savage roots to ever
greater depths of organization and accomplishment.
Progression: n.:
a sequence with consistently changing quality from one element to
the next, as big, better, best.
The progression of age behaviors would be: infantile, puerile, juvenile, adolescent, mature, adult, wise, crotchety, senile.
Progressive tax: n.:
from each according to his ability to pay; a policy that funds
services preferentially from those who use them least.
PRolitics: n.:
Herblock's term for government of the sound bite, by the rigged
poll, for the spin doctor, which shall not vanish from the evening news.
Promiscuity: n.:
malicious name for popularity.
Proofread: v.i.:
learn to identify the most potent liquors by examination of their labels.
Propaganda: n.:
PR presented in support of a cause not on my support list.
Proper: adj.:
right -- usually far right.
Property: n.:
the object of avarice. It comes primarily in two varieties: real
property -- dirt and its appurtenances and products -- and private
property -- the ephemeral accumulations of our little lives --
which by contrast must needs be somewhat unreal.
Prophecy: n.:
fortune-telling in its Sunday-go-to-meeting clothes.
Prophet: n.:
Speaker for God.
Pronounced profit, in recognition of the record of most who claim that title.
Propriety: n.:
behavior that does not offend me.
Proselytizer: n.:
walking illustration of the principle "if they could do it, they
wouldn't have to talk about it all the time."
Prostate: n.:
a gland that women are blessed by not having.
Prostitution: n.:
commercialized intercourse; short-term rental of sexual services,
as contrasted with the longer-term lease represented by marriage.
The oldest commercial method to make ends meet.
Protected wetland: n.:
under a Democratic administration, any place that has ever held a
puddle long enough to serve as a birdbath or attract a frog;
under a Republican administration, any land with permanent
standing water that has soil properties such as to make it overly
expensive to drain and develop.
Protectionism: n.:
trade regulation that benefits someone elses business.
Protest: v.i.:
what the lady does too much, methinks.
This sentiment is shared by Shakespeare in the 17th century and the right in the 20th.
Of course, we don't call them ladies any more -- they're wo-persons.
Protest group: n.:
an organization formed for the purpose of getting its leadership
exposure on television.
Proud: adj.:
swollen with self congratulation.
Providence: proper name:
upscale name for one's guardian angel; affected title for Chance.
Provocative: adj.:
appealing to those desires of mine which I would prefer to deny.
Prudence: n.:
wisdom to the timid.
Prudent: adj.:
acting in a way that would denote cowardice in my enemies.
Prudery: n.:
the worst kind of avarice: that directed toward the theft of
another's self respect.
Prudish: adj.:
even more inhibited than I.
Prurient: adj.:
desirable.
Pseudo-science: n.:
a scurrilous compendium of data, observations, anecdotes and
conclusions that disagree with my beliefs.
Psychoanalysis: n.:
the branch of Medicine wherein the patient as well as the doctor
embarks on a career in the field.
Based on the teachings of Fraud.
Psychosclerosis: n.:
hardening of the attitudes; a natural, though hardly inevitable, disease of age or success; a frequent symptom of wealth.
Pubic: adj.:
not public; private; unsuitable for a 'G' or 'R' rating.
The term came into general usage during the Clarence Thomas confirmation
hearings.
Public enemy: n.:
high-profile scapegoat for incompetent or corrupt police work.
Public interest: n.:
interests of a powerful pressure group.
Pun: n.:
flatus of the body of humor.
Punctuation: n.:
instructions from the writer to the reader, especially the reader-aloud.
Pundit: n.:
media-nese for expert; a commentator whose pronouncements
enjoy the same sort of respect as the humor form from which he
draws his title.
Punishment: n.:
revenge.
Punk: n.:
anyone else's teenaged child.
Puppet show: n.:
a childrens' entertainment intended to educate the young ones
about the operation of legislatures and parliaments.
Purist: n.:
someone who would be an anal-retentive nit picker if he didn't
share my interest in the topic in question.
Puritan: n.:
one who is opposed to sex, lest it lead to dancing.
Purple: adj.:
traditional color for royalty or prose, which may account for why
writers seem to think they deserve to be treated like monarchs.
And why everyone in a position of power seems to think they're a
writer.
"Put your money where your mouth is": motto:
see your orthodontist.
Pygalge: n.:
one who, or that which, causes a pain in the butt.
Your humble servant.
Pygalgic: adj.:
a word (literally, causing a pain in the buttocks) that does not get
nearly as much use as it deserves. [pronounced pie-gal-jick]
Pygmy: n.:
Reader's Digest version of a basketball player.
Pyramid: v.i.:
to build up from a broad and substantial base to a narrow and
inconsequential climax.
Pyromaniac: n.:
someone who gets his rocks off by getting things hot.
Pyrrhic victory: n.:
one that ran over budget.