1. "the culture of life"

This means that there should be no tampering with embryos, whether in the wombs of women or in laboratories. It does not mean that the mercury in fish couldn't kill the embryos or make them deformed. Neither does it mean that there is anything wrong with executing people in general or with waging war in Iraq in which countless numbers of hapless bypassers get blown to a stage resembling shredded wheat. And, finally, it does not mean that assault weapons should be banned.

2. "the sanctity of marriage"

This means that there should be no same-sex marriage. It does not mean that irresponsible and careless marriages should not be entered into, or that adulterous spouses should be stoned (at least not yet). Neither does it mean that marriages should not contain violence or intimidation, or that divorce and remarriage would be frowned upon.

3. "family values"

This means that all families should consist of a male breadwinner, a female housewife and many children. It also means that families should be hierarchical structures in which the man is the leader and the woman a graceful submitter, and in which the children have no say about anything. Conservative family values also cover the desire to make abortion illegal. But they have very little to say about love among family members, about respect for their needs and desires and about the intricate web that ties us all together.

4. "God"

This is the god of the Christian right, the god that speaks to George Bush directly, the god who is planning to have the world end soon in an Armageddon, preceded by Rapture in which good conservative Christians are lifted into the heavens as naked as they were born, while everybody else is left behind to be roughly sorted out by a Rambo Jesus. This god needs to have a war in the Middle East as the Armageddon will begin there.

"God" does not refer to non-Christian images of god, and neither does it include the loving and caring god of the New Testament in the Bible.

5. "Compassionate Conservatism"

This means sighing sadly and tsk-tsking while holding tight to the money bags. It also means farming out all government social services to various ultra-right wing Christian organizations who can do them very cheaply, given that they substitute drugs and therapy with prayer and brainwashing. It does notmean acting in a compassionate fashion, except in the sense that large grants will be made available for beginning struggling wingnut organizations such as the Independent Women's Forum.

6. "catastrophic success"

Catastrophic success is what is happening in Iraq. It's winning the war so well that the peace never arrives, so it's regarded as a good thing. The more common interpretation of this term would simply abolish the second half of the term and call the outcome catastrophic. Which it is.

• accordionated: Being able to drive and refold a road map at the same time.
• aeropalmics: The study of wind resistance conducted by holding a cupped hand out the car window.
• agonosis: The syndrome of tuning into "Wide World of Sports" every Saturday just to watch the skier rack himself.
• bozone: The substance surrounding stupid people that stops bright ideas from penetrating. The bozone layer, unfortunately, shows little sign of breaking down in the near future.
• mummabolic chorus: When three or more people are singing along to a tune and suddenly discover they are all faking their way through the unintelligible lyrics.
• narcolepulacy: The contagious action of yawning, causing everyone in sight to also yawn.
• pajangle: Condition of waking up with your pajamas turned 180 degrees.
• prestofrigeration: The peculiar habit, when searching for a snack, of constantly returning to the refrigerator in hopes that something new will have materialized.
• rignition: The embarrassing action of trying to start one's car with the engine already running.
• tanumbum: The sorry side of the Christmas tree that gets placed toward the wall.
• wondracide: The act of mangling a piece of soft white bread with a pat of cold butter.

• DUMBWAITER: one who asks if the kids would care to order dessert.
• FEEDBACK: the inevitable result when the baby doesn't appreciate the strained carrots.
• FULL NAME: what you call your child when you're mad at him.
• GRANDPARENTS: the people who think your children are wonderful even though they're sure you're not raising them right.
• HEARSAY: what toddlers do when anyone mutters a dirty word.
• INDEPENDENT: how we want our children to be as long as they do everything we say.
• OW: the first word spoken by children with older siblings
• PUDDLE: a small body of water that draws other small bodies wearing dry shoes into it.
• SHOW OFF: a child who is more talented than yours.
• STERILIZE: what you do to your first baby's pacifier by boiling it, and to your last baby's pacifier by blowing on it and wiping it with saliva.
• TOP BUNK: where you should never put a child wearing Superman jammies.
• TWO-MINUTE WARNING: when the baby's face turns red and she begins to make those familiar grunting noises.

• anonymiss -- the act of forgetting someone's name immediately upon being introduced
• crough -- to cough during a play or concert, causing other people around you to cough
• jennamnesia -- to be so drunk as to forget you're the President's daughter
• bobbityboo -- mental distress in males inspired by thoughts of surgically-removed penises
• spaffle -- completely cooked waffle iron runoff
• smealth -- the ability to secretly leave behind body odor in an elevator to be blamed on the next person who enters
• massturbation -- group phone sex
• dopplersation -- a discussion held by two people who are continuing to move away from each other
• afterblow -- the compulsive need to review the contents of one's handkerchief following a good nose-blow
• spillisecond -- the fraction of a second in which one may recover a toppled beverage before any liquid spills out
• algebrassierism -- the compulsion to spend time in math class spelling "BOOBIES" on an upside-down calculator
• doglet -- any breed of dog so small it can be terrorized by the average-sized house cat
• squee-squee -- the curved line on a windshield caused by a little nick in an old wiper blade
• andgasm -- simultaneous climax
• blisstory -- the belief that most if not all of major historical events are important primarily as backdrops to doomed love affairs
• crapnotize -- to subconsciously convince someone that "Will and Grace" is actually funny
• deflux -- the swallowing of one's own vomit
• doubleuism -- unplanned, tortured offering of a new word by a high ranking elected official
• flavin -- means absolutely nothing, but should be loudly blurted in a Jerry Lewis voice
• frappuchinos -- coffee-colored dungarees perfect for hiding embarrassing spills
• pervblips -- on rented tapes of "American Beauty," the light bands crossing the screen at the spot, which has been paused, rewound and replayed 10,000 times, where Thora Birch doffs her top
• pestcard -- those annoying mail-in postage paid cards in the middle of magazines
• pornopops -- browser windows that persistently open up as you try to leave a web site
• Moulin rage -- the emotion felt upon realizing that after spending $9.00 for a film, all you got was a headache
• berlguruk -- onomatopoeia for the end result of a meal of whiskey and Taco Bell
• chadowboxing -- debating back-and-forth as to how to count a close election
• spazzle -- to perform an act of clumsiness so extreme as to cause onlookers to burst into spontaneous applause

• Intaxication: Euphoria at getting a tax refund, which lasts until you realize it was your money to start with.
• Reintarnation: Coming back to life as a hillbilly.
• Foreploy: Any misrepresentation about yourself for the purpose of getting laid.
• Giraffiti: Vandalism spray-painted very, very high.
• Sarchasm: The gulf between the author of sarcastic wit and the person who doesn't get it.
• Inoculatte: To take coffee intravenously when you are running late.
• Hipatitis: Terminal coolness.
• Osteoporosis: A degenerate disease.
• Karmageddon: It's like, when everybody is sending off all these really bad vibes, right? And then, like, the Earth explodes and it's like, a serious bummer.
• Glibido: All talk and no action.
• Dopeler effect: The tendency of stupid ideas to seem smarter when they come at you rapidly.
• Ignoranus: A person who's both stupid and an asshole.

• Sexcellant: something so good that it can only be described in terms of sex
• Wopportunity: the chance to go to Burger King
• Joctor: a person who specializes in sports medicine
• Iniot: A dumb moron who believes that he is apart of the "in" crowd, but in reality he is too stupid to realize that he is the one always being made fun of.
• Procreastination: the act of putting off having kids because you think you will have more money to afford children if you wait a little longer
• Naggravate: the actions or words, used by a female, to irritate a male
• Sexcuse: an illegitimate reason for not wanting to make love, i.e. "Not tonight dear, I have a headache!"
• Sinfomercial: when busty women in tight clothes are peddling products that have nothing to do with busty women
• Sextension: tension that builds up since your last sexual experience.
• Typast: a typist recently fired for making continuous typographical errors
• Testocular: the connection between what a man sees and his sex organ
• Ribbermaid: a maid that continually teases you
• Potfall: the biggest potholl in the road on the way to work

• embareassment: feeling of shame and inadequacy experienced while at a nude beach
• carbage: trash that accumulates in the back seat of your vehicle
• avalunche: a sandwich made so tall that it falls over
• banjlo: special banjo with a beautifully round end that is twice the size of a regular banjo's end
• bong-vivant: a particularly social stoner
• scatula: an invaluable utensil for the responsible urban dog-owner
• gasshole: someone who supports drilling in wildlife refuges so he can drive his SUV back and forth to the office
• satisfiction: when she fakes an orgasm
• sofu: the stuff that develops in your butt crack after one has vegged out in front of the TV all day
• trampon: a feminine-hygiene product for promiscuous women
• negligeence: failing to put on a condom, because DAMN, GIRL -- you look fine in that nighty!
• carnacle: a sideshow barker who follows you throughout the entire fair, refusing to leave you alone
• defurestation: a painful uprooting of body hair, such as when Ed Asner and Robin Williams part after embracing
• harpiness: the feeling of elation that comes from being a complete and utter bitch
• marchiavellian: authoritarian behavior by the high school band leader
• misclosure: making public only the information that makes you look good, while claiming privilege against releasing any information that makes you look bad
• Sabo-masochism: submitting oneself to sexual domination by a former Cincinnati Reds third baseman
• Talibran: part of an Islamic fundamentalist's complete breakfast
• algoreithm: a computational procedure whereby a majority is made equivalent to a minority by factoring in nine
• dellular: "Dude! You're gettin' a mobile phone!"
• democat: presidential candidate who uses all 9 lives attempting to be declared winner of the election
• lumpteen: an inactive youth older than 12 and younger than 20
• narcoric: whatever that stuff is that makes Katie Couric so perky in the morning
• liarrhea: an uncomfortable feeling brought on by declining an antacid tablet after a meal of five-alarm chili dogs and Old Milwaukee
• discombabulate: to confuse a gorgeous woman
• panticipation: heavy breathing while waiting for porn to slowly download
• rectingle: a pleasurable feeling experienced while indulging in, er, "backdoor" sex
• rebelation: the realization that the South will never rise again
• subterfudge: sneaking your own chocolates into the movie theater
• filibustier: to talk nonstop about one's new breast implants
• errorist: suicide bomber who kills only himself
• inflatulation: the act of accidentally passing gas in front of someone on whom you have a crush
• gundamentalist: belief in the sanctity of human life, unless taken by a nice, shiny firearm
• hURL: a link to a web site that makes you want to puke
• masterbate: to expertly practice self-abuse
• bachanal: event marked by the playing of crappy classical music
• bovile: an evil cow
• cremtation: the overwhelming urge to dispose of the bodies in the cheapest way possible
• hindsome: possessing a highly-desirable derriere
• magnifry: focusing the sun's rays on an enemy toy soldier

• Sitcom: What yuppies turn into when they have children and one of them stops working to stay home with the kids. Stands for: Single Income, Two Children, Oppresive Mortgage.
• Squirt the Bird: To transmit a signal to a satellite.
• Starter Marriage: A short-lived first marriage that ends in divorce with no kids, no property, and no regrets.
• Stress Puppy: A person who seems to thrive on being stressed out and whiny.
• Swiped Out: An ATM or credit card that has been rendered useless because the magnetic strip is worn away from extensive use.
• Tourists: People who take training classes just to get a vacation from their jobs. Example: "We had three serious students in the class, the rest were just tourists."
• Treeware: Hacker slang for documentation or other printed material.
• Xerox Subsidy: Euphemism for swiping free photocopies from one's workplace.
• Going Postal: Euphemism for being totally stressed out, for losing it. Makes reference to the unfortunate track record of postal employees who have snapped and gone on shooting rampages.
• Alpha Geek: The most knowlegable and technically proficient person in the workplace.
• Chips and Salsa: Chips= hardware, Salsa= software. i.e: "Well, first we gotta figure out if the problem's in your chips or in your salsa."
• G.O.O.D. Job: A "Get-Out-Of-Debt" job. A well paying job people take in order to pay off their debts, one that they will quit as soon as they are solvent again.
• Irritainment: Entertainment and media spectacles that are annoying but you find yourself unable to stop watching. i.e: The O.J. Trials, Ally McBeal, Monica Lewinsky, Who Wants to Be a Millionaire, Elian, ect.
• Deinstalled: Euphemism for being fired. Heard on the voicemail of a vice-president at a downsizing computer firm: "You have reached the number of a deinstalled vice-president. Please dial our main number and ask the operator for assistance. (See also, Decruitment, Decommisioned)
• Vulcan Nerve Pince: The taxing hand posision required to reach all the appropriate keys for certain commands. i.e: the warm reboot for a Mac II computer involes simultaneously pressing the Control key, the Command key, the Return key, and the Power-On key. Sometimes referred to as the three-fingered salute.
• Yuppie Food Stamps: The ubiquitous $20 bills spewed out of ATM's everywhere. Often used when trying to split a bill after a meal: "We owe $8 each, but all anybody's got are yuppie food stamps."
• Assmosis: The process by which some people seem to obsorb success and advancement by kissing up to the boss.
• Blamestorming: Sitting around in a group discussing why a deadline was missed or a project failed and who is responsible.
• Seagull Manager: A manager who flies in, makes a lot of noise, craps over everything, then leaves.
• Salmon Day: The experience of spending an entire day swimming upstream, only to get screwed and die in the end.
• Chainsaw Consultant: An outside expert brought in to reduce the employee head count, leaving the brass with clean hands.
• CLM: Career Limiting Move. Used among microserfs to describe ill-advised activity. Trashing your boss while he/she is in earshot is a major CLM.
• Adminisphere: The rarefied organizational layers beginning just above the rank and file. Decisions that fall from the adminisphere are often profoundly inappropriate or irrelevant to the problems they were designed to solve.
• Dilberted: To be exploited and oppressed by your boss. Derived from the experiences of Dilbert, the geek-in-hell comic strip character. "I've been dilberted again. The old man revised the specs for the 4th time this week."
• Flight Risk: Used to describe employees who are suspected of or planning to leave the company or department soon.
• 404: Someone who's clueless. From the World Wide Web error message, "404 Not Found," meaning the requested document could not be located. As in: "Don't bother asking him, he's 404, man."
• Generica: Features of the American landscape that are exactly the same no matter where one is, such as fast food joints, strip malls, subdivisions.
• Ohno Second: That miniscule fraction of time in which you realize that you just made a BIG mistake.
• Percussive Maintainance: The fine art of whacking the crap out of an electronic device to get it to work again.
• Umfriend: A sexual relationship of dubious standing or a concealed intimate relationship, such as, "This is Bridget, my.... um.... friend."
• Body Nazis: Hardcore exercise and weightlifting fanatics who look down on anyone who doesn't work out obsessively.
• Cube Farm: An office filled with cubicles.
• Idea Hamsters: People who always seem to have their idea generators running.
• Mouse Potato: The online, wired generation's answer to the couch potato.
• Prairie Dogging: When someone yells or drops something loadly in a cube farm, and people's heads pop up over walls to see what's going on.

• Abdicate: to give up all hope of ever having a flat stomach
• Balderdash: a rapidly receding hairline
• Circumvent: the opening in the front of boxer shorts
• Coffee: a person who is coughed upon
• Esplanade: to attempt an explanation while drunk
• Flabbergasted: appalled over how much weight you've gained
• Flatulence: the emergency vehicle that picks you up after you've been run over by a steam roller
• Frisbeetarianism: the belief that, when you die, your soul goes upon the roof and gets stuck there
• Gargoyle: an olive-flavored mouthwash
• Lymph: to walk with a lisp
• Negligent: describes the condition in which you absentmindedly answer the door in your nightie
• Oyster: a person who sprinkles his conversation with Yiddish expressions
• Pokemon: a Jamaican proctologist
• Rectitude: the formal, dignified demeanor assumed by a proctologist immediately before he exams you
• Testicle: a humorous question on an exam
• Willy-nilly: impotent

• Aquadextrous: possessing the ability to turn the bathtub tap on and off with your toes
• Carperpetuation: the act, when vacuuming, of running over a string or a piece of lint at least a dozen times, reaching over and picking it up, examining it, then putting it back down to give the vacuum one more chance
• Disconfect: to sterilize the piece of confection (lolly) you dropped on the floor by blowing on it, assuming this will somehow "remove" all the germs
• Elbonics: the actions of two people maneuvering for one armrest at a movie theater
• Frust: the small line of debris that refuses to be swept onto the dust pan and keeps backing a person across the room until he finally decides to give up and sweep it under the rug
• Lactomagulation: manhandling the "open here" spout on a milk container so badly that one has to resort to the "illegal" side
• Peppier: the waiter at a fancy restaurant whose sole purpose seems to be walking around asking diners if they want fresh ground pepper
• Phonesia: the affliction of dialing a phone number and forgetting whom you were calling just as they answer
• Pupkus: The moist residue left on a window after a dog presses its nose to it
• Telecrastination: The act of always letting the phone ring at least twice before you pick it up, even when you're only six inches away