Nobody loves a cynic. His friends grow tired of his airy detachment and cutting irony. His colleagues find him peevish and aloof. Productive citizens chide him for refusing to lead, follow or get out of the way. – From the Preface
Let me assure you that I am not a cynic of the hard-boiled school–one of those narrow-eyed miscreants who view life through a noxious cloud of cigarette smoke. I am (as I suspect you are) actually a disgruntled idealist–a sympathetic fellow with a fondness for dogs and most children. – From the Preface
The age has slapped me on the face; with this book, I challenge it to a duel. – From the Preface
Let me goad the obnoxious, defend the defenseless, play like a cat with whatever smacks of folly, and attack bullies from the incomparable safety of the printed page. What could be more fun? – From the Preface
ACADEMIA: A chronic disease characterized by a compulsion to write lengthy specialized treatises in unintelligible vocabularies, for the purpose of rising in the esteem of those similarly afflicted.
ANGST: A form of misery caused by too much thinking; a phenomenon probably incomprehensible to anyone who owns a recreational vehicle.
ARTIFICIAL INSEMINATION: Procreation without recreation.
ATHEISM: A godless religion that retains all the dogmatic posturing of the faiths it so confidenly denies, with few of the consolations.
AUTHOR: A writer with connections in the publishing industry.
BANK: Where money automatically increases in value, especially when we need to borrow some.
BEER: An intoxicating golden brew that reemerges virtually unchanged an hour later.
BLAME: Tossing the hot potato of responsibility to an innocent bystander, usually a male of European ancestry.
BOOKCASE: A piece of furniture used in America to house bowling trophies and Elvis collectibles.
BOSS: A personal dictator appointed to those of us fortunate enough to live in free societies.
CHIC: Considered smart without the deadening implication of intelligence.
CHILDHOOD: The rapidly shrinking interval between infancy and first arrest on a drug or weapons charge.
CLIQUE: A group of insiders who greet outsiders with their backsides; a closed circle of asses.
COMMITTEE: A grotesque creature with multiple heads and twice as many feet, no three of them pointing in the same direction.
CREDIT CARD: Plastic passport to the valley of the shadow of debt.
CONSULTANT: A jobless person who shows executives how to work.
CYNIC: An idealist whose rose-colored glasses have been removed, snapped in two and stomped into the ground, immediately improving his vision.
DENIAL: How an optimist keeps from becoming a pessimist.
DIET: The temporary triumph of will over metabolism.
DIVORCE: Termination of a marriage before either spouse can terminate the other.
DNA: A complex organic molecule characterized as the building block of life and appropriately shaped like a spiral staircase to nowhere.
DYSFUNCTIONAL FAMILY: A term used by psychologists to describe any household occupied by two or more related individuals.
EXECUTIVE: One who executes middle managers, esp. while wearing an expensive suit.
FAD: A folly committed by enough of the right people to confer upon it the badge of status.
FASHION: Today’s rage, tomorrow’s chuckle.
FUNDAMENTALIST: Anyone who takes the Word of God too seriously.
FUNERAL HOME: A stately manse occupied by transients who continually receive visitors but lack the energy and inclination to entertain them.
GOLF: The fine art of driving hard, avoiding the rough, surmounting traps and hazards, aiming straight, and arriving on the green at last, only to end up in a hole in the ground before your companions. The favored pastime of businessmen and their cronies, probably without a full appreciation of its metaphorical implications.
HEIR: The idle offspring of a workaholic.
HIP: Smartly attuned to the latest cutting-edge cliches.
HOMETOWN: The community that nurtures us during our formative years, so that we might attend a good school, succeed handsomely and spend the rest of our lives somewhere else.
IDEOLOGUE: Typically an obscure humorless zealot who finds fulfillment by spouting the ideas of famous humorless zealots.
IQ: The number that predicts the extent to which one will perform successfully on future IQ tests.
LAWYER: A professional advocate hired to bend the law on behalf of a paying client; for this reason considered the most suitable background for entry into politics.
LECHER: A stud with liver spots.
LOOTING: A public shopping spree generously sponsored by local merchants in the wake of a riot.
LOSER: Anyone too incompetent to master the ways of the world, or too proud.
LOTTERY: The equivalent of betting that the next pope will be from Duluth, or that the parrot in the pet store window speaks Flemish.
MANAGEMENT: A class of semi-skilled corporate hirelings whose rise within the organization correlates directly with the amount of work they delegate to their more talented underlings.
MATH ANXIETY: An intense lifelong fear of two trains approaching each other at speeds of 60 and 80 mph.
MENTOR: A kindly tutor who attempts to spare a young apprentice ten years of mistakes by imparting the accumulated wisdom from thirty years of mistakes.
MIDLIFE CRISIS: The sickening realization, usually at the onset of middle age, that we’ve spent the last ten years buttoning up into the wrong buttonholes.
MORALITY: A traditional code of decency that went out the window about the same time as belief in eternal damnation.
MUGGER: A benevolent citizen of the streets who frequently spares the lives of total strangers in exchange for any cash and valuables in their possession.
NECKTIE: A decorative noose worn by businessmen.
NEGOTIATING: The art of persuading your opponent to take the nice shiny copper penny and give you the wrinkled old paper money.
NEIGHBORS: The strangers who live next door.
NEUROTIC: Sane but unhappy about it.
OBITUARY: A final summation of our lives that, for most of us, occupies about three inches of space in what will shortly become cage liner for our neighbor’s parakeet.
ORGASM: The punch line some women just don’t get, generally because their mates have a tendency to rush through the joke.
PORNOGRAPHY: A two-dimensional substitute for that which the consumer cannot accomplish in three.
POSITIVE THINKING: Self-improvement through self-deception.
POWER: The ability to make our fellow humans squirm, sweat and stammer on command. Often regarded as an aphrodisiac; actually a potent laxative that, when ingested by people in high places, causes everyone below to run for cover. POWER BROKER: The man who hands out the laxatives.
PROFESSIONAL MODEL: Cheekbones that sell cosmetics; hipbones that sell anorexia.
QUAGMIRE: Any situation more easily entered into than exited from; e.g., a guerrilla war, a bad marriage or a conversation with an insurance salesman.
QUALITY OF LIFE: What an industrialized nation is said to offer when enough of its citizens are suffering from terminal stress.
RETIREMENT: The liberation of a captive butterfly just as its wings begin to crumble.
REVOLUTIONARY: An oppressed person waiting for the opportunity to become an oppressor.
SCIENCE FICTION: Fairy tales for nerds.
SMILE: To expose a portion of one’s skeleton as a gesture of goodwill toward a fellow human.
STATE-OF-THE-ART: Soon-to-be-obsolete.
STEREOTYPE: A shoe designed to fit all feet within a particular ethnic or social group. When the shoe fits, as it sometimes will, the salesmen exchange sly winks across the room.
TEMPS: Migrant workers in business clothes.
TRAILER PARKS: Latter-day Gypsy camps scattered throughout the vast American hinterland; humble places of abode where aspirations die young and tornadoes gravitate like flies to roadkill.
UNEMPLOYMENT: The usual alternative to overwork.
URBAN RENEWAL: The replacement of old inner-city slums with newer, uglier ones.
URINAL: The one place where all men are peers.
VIRGIN: A young innocent who in former times was sacrificed to the gods but who now merely lives in disgrace.
VOTING: The right of our citizens to do as they please behind a curtain, as long as they do it alone.
WAKE: 1. A convivial soiree with a preserved corpse in the room. 2. What the mourners would be visibly startled to see the corpse do, esp. those expecting a sizable inheritance.
ZOO: A pleasant and instructive wildlife park, lately denounced for depriving animals of their right to starve or be eaten alive in their natural habitats.
All material from The Cynic’s Dictionary copyright 1994-2012 by Rick Bayan.
