Aarp: American Association of Retired Persons. An organization that sends out welcome letters to people over fifty to remind them that they will soon be dead.
Abba: Swedish pop group whose catchy melodies are very useful in helping to illuminate which one of your friends is probably gay.
Abs: A part of the human body that can, apparently in only minutes a day as part of this exclusive TV offer, become rock hard.
Academy Award: Recognition of achievement in the motion picture industry. Given annually to a group of people who are a hundred times prettier, richer, and more popular than you will ever be or have any hope of being.
Accent: A way of speaking that reflects the region of the world in which you grew up. Depending on where that it is and where you are when you use it, it could help either get you beat up or laid.
Accountant: One of a mysterious race of mole people who resurface once a quarter and charge you to use quicken.
Achievement: A great accomplishment, often accompanied by a sense of triumph. Or, as it is known to 98 percent of the population, getting out of bed in the morning.
Acid: Something you definitely have to be on to appreciate Carrot Top.
Acne: Nature's way of telling you that you are not quite ready to have sex.
Activist: A person who cared about the fate of the world, until reaching approximately twenty-eight years of age.
Acupuncturist: An alternative-medicine practitioner who gets to stab people and call it therapy.
Ad Hoc: A Latin phrase meaning "Hey, look at me, I know a Latin phrase."
Adorable: 1. The quality of being darling or cute. Usually confined to forwarded e-mails about kittens. 2. A word used by women in bars to refer to a man they want to say something nice about while making it painfully clear that they would never in a million years sleep with him.
Adult: What you become when you finally give up drinking, sleeping around, and bouncing from job to job. Also known as kill-me-now syndrome.
Adventurous: Something your spouse claimed to be when you first started dating, but the Ben WA balls are gathering dust in the closet and in all this time you've yet to cruise the bars looking to spice things up.
Advertisement: A medium through which people who truly care about your welfare (and not at all about money) provide you with helpful, extremely subtle reminders that your bad breath, body odor, cell phone provider, and make of car all have to go.
Advice: The only thing in the world more unwelcome than a baby in a movie theatre.
Affable: A workplace-based adjective used to describe the suck-up that always volunteers to replace the toner.
Affluent: A word that allows you to describe a rich person without incorporating the usual tinge of jealousy and resentment.
Aggressive: A forceful, go-getter attitude that is greatly admired in business unless you are a woman.
Aglow: The condition of being flush with radiant emotion, such as one in the bloom of love. Or, it might just be gas.
Agoraphobia: A sudden attack of fear, anxiety, or panic--such as that brought about by the sudden realization that you forgot to clear your Internet history before leaving for work today.
Air: The glorious, god-given substance that provides us our very breath of life while also containing the disgusting contagious pathogens that will one day kill us.
Airbrush: An artist's tool invented by Playboy magazine to give your girlfriend an inferiority complex.
Air-conditioning: The glorious, man-made appliance that cools us in the heat of summer while blasting out recirculated air that contains the disgusting, contagious, pathogens that will one day kill us.
Airplane: A giant passenger vehicle whose entire operation will fail unless you seat backs and tray tables are in the upright and locked position.
Airport: A mall placed near a large parking lot in which planes often land but rarely take off. To take you mind off the endless delays, these cavernous dungeons are populated by clueless security and ticket agents, zombie-like skycaps, and thousands of needlessly detained travelers enduring either the frustration of lost luggage or an impromptu body-cavity search. If Dante were alive today, airports would be listed at the fifth ring of Hell.
Alcohol: Awkwardness, foul breath, financial ruin, and the alienation of everybody who ever cared about you, all in handy liquid form, often with a twist of cap.
Alive: The state of existing--of being cognizant of existence. Depending on just how much of your horrendous childhood you need to block out, this condition may not kick in until shortly after you graduate from high school.
Allen, Woody: Some elderly creep who married his barely college-aged adopted stepdaughter. Also apparently made films or something, although any such accomplishment is often usurped by the act of marrying his barely college-aged stepdaughter.
All Right: What a man insists that he is feeling whenever his significant other asks how he is feeling.
Almost: Just about, not quite, virtually, nearly, for all practical purposes... whatever. You freaking blew it, so just man up and admit it.
Alone: Isolated, forsaken--for example, a green party politician during a U..S election cycle.
Alternative: A type of music that pretentious, hipper-than-thou people like to day they listen to, completely oblivious to the fact that it has been labeled "alternative" by the same corporate machinery that makes all the other kinds of non alternative music available for download on ITunes. Their pretentiousness is exacerbated by the fact that you can often catch these so-called cool people weeping while indulging in an MP3 of "Wing Beneath my Wings" when they think no one is looking.
Amateur: A beginner or aspirant in a given field; a non professional as distinct from a practicing professional-- except in the field of pornography, in which no such distinctions are necessary or even pertinent.
Ambiguous: Either that gal in human resourced who wears button-downs and khakis all the time or that guy in account payable who always has an ascot covering his Adam's Apple.
Ambitions: Nature's way of preparing us for heart medication.
America: An ongoing experiment in democracy controlled largely by insanely wealthy people. And that's just the way we like it, thank you very much.
Amish: A sect of life-sustaining people whose way of life is so different from the current ideological mainstream that its a wonder nobody's bombed them yet.
Analog: Rare. Recording or television transmissions delivered non digitally. While difficult to find, these strange devices do turn up on occasion, such as in the apartments of shut-ins or in the squirrel-infested cabins of half-mad, heavily armed conspiracy theorists.
Anarchist: Someone who advocates the overthrow of the existing power structure, or just anyone with a goatee.
Anesthetic: Substance used by medical professionals who have no other way of shaving off someone's pubic hair without the person noticing.
Angels: Celestial beings that apparently have nothing to do than hover around and make sure we get parking spaces and come to terms with getting cancer.
Anger: Fury, outrage--such as that felt upon getting the news that you have cancer, until an angel drops by to calm you down and help you face your horrendous fate with dignity.
Angst: A troubled state of mind that can make a person sullen and anxious. This can have a certain appeal when you are young, impressionable, and hopelessly naive enough to think that you're going to be the one to change the angst-ridden person in question. This is a notion of which you are usually disabused after their third or fourth suicide attempt.
Animals: Creatures that leave us very few options besides hunting them, eating the, keeping them as pets, or locking them in a cage. That's just how it is when you hold dominion over all nature.
Animation: A moving picture cartoon, usually featuring wisecracking anthropomorphized animals or sanitized reinterpretations of classic fairy tales. Animation can provide hours of downtime for adults who simply plunk their little ones in front of the television and let it hypnotize them into inactivity while the grown-ups kick back and try not to feel guilty about abdicating all responsibility as parents.
Anniversary: Try forgetting it, and you'll see that the hell it means.
Ant: An insect of the family Formicade, colonies of which have been around for 130 million years and have succeeded in occupying almost every landmass on Earth. Kind of puts your bachelor's in business administration in perspective, doesn't it?
Antsy: What irritating, twitchy people were before they had the luxury of saying they had something called restless leg syndrome.
Apartment: A place to throw you money away on rent before you throw your money away on a mortgage.
Apathy: A state of uninterest bordering on lethargy. Ask any retail clerk for assistance to experience this phenomenon first hand.
Applause: An obligatory expression of approval for someone's half-assed form of creative expression that arises more from relief that the experience is finally over than from a genuine feeling of having been entertained.
Appliance: Something a man gives his wife for her birthday to none too subtly indicate that the sexual spark between them is horribly, irretrievably gone.
Appreciate: A word commonly used by superiors to indicate that they want you to do a task patently outside of your job description and that doing it will result in their undying gratitude and heartfelt admiration but absolutely no pay. "I would appreciate it if you would go over the filing cabinets and alphabetize the last sixteen years of active sales leads before Tuesday."
Archimedes: Greek scientist, born 387 BC. One of the main guys responsible got giving the world math. Thanks a lot, you bastard.
Architect: A bold, forward-thinking leader who guides teams of designers in the creation of the world's dwellings and great buildings of commerce and industry. The typical architect starts out with grand, sweeping visions of making an impact similar to that of Frank Lloyd Wright, only to end up being in charge of revamping the neighborhood Chuck E. Cheese's.
Aristotle: Greek philosopher, born 384 BC. Though his name is world famous, he remains one of those guys you hope nobody ever asks you a question about.
Art: The deliberate arrangement of elements in any given medium in such a way to appeal to the aesthetic sense. If the last few centuries are any indication, most works of art could have easily been painted by the five-year-old child of whoever is viewing the work at the time.
Artistic: Having skills or ability in a creative field. It is surprisingly easy to identify artistic talent during youth, as the budding artists are usually the ones getting the crap kicked out of them at recess.
Assembly line: A process perfected in the early twentieth century that allowed for mass production and ushered in the modern consumer age while simultaneously taking all the individuality out of labour and turning workers into brain-dead zombies. Not to mention brain-dead zombies with carpal tunnel syndrome.
Attila the Hun: Leader of a band of Central Asian nomads from 434 to 453; his invading armies cut a swath through many regions of Europe, little realizing that they would all be forgotten while their lousy boss got all the credit and became synonymous with merciless savagery. Typical.
Attraction: The most mysterious of all laws of human interaction, especially when it concerns someone who dumped your ass and is not with someone thirty pounds heavier than you.
Aunt: The sister of one's father or mother. A woman congenitally obligated to spit into her handkerchief and then use the disgusting snot rag to wipe something off your face. More frightening varieties of aunts also wear hats with plastic fruit on them.
Automobile: An individual land transports vehicle used mainly to provoke the extension of the human middle finger.
Awesome: A word more properly used to denote something truly breathtaking, unbelievably magnificent, or strikingly wonderful; it is now used to describe everything from a half-decent meal to a show of support for someone who just landed an entry-level job at Staples.