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AIDS
The Black Death updated for the free-love era; a slow-motion epidemic that threatens to purge the world of its sexual adventurers, along with haemophiliacs, intravenous drug users, recipients of tainted blood, half the population of East Africa, and anyone else who gets in the way. |
Air-conditioning
An invention for sucking the warmth out of the sensuous summer air, so that we might shiver in July and work through the season without dreaming of hammocks or lemonade. |
Air Pollution
The forced conversion of all city-dwellers into chain-smokers. |
Airplane
A flying ship considered by most studies to be the safest mode of transportation, at least while it remains aloft. |
Airport
A destination to which we proceed with haste so that we can glance at our watches for the next two and a half hours. When our time comes to voyage into the great beyond, we enter a long tunnel that leads to a circle of light, where a smiling attendant directs us to the first-class cabin or the other place. |
Alcoholic
Clinical term for a tippler in an age that no longer smiles at tippling; graciously enables the sufferer to exchange a personal vice for an incurable disease. |
Alienation
The demoralizing sensation of being an outsider among insiders; a malaise frequently experienced by adolescents, American Indians, elderly people residing in a place other than Eastbourne and arts graduates entering the business world as clerk-typists. |
Alimony
The sum of money a man is commanded to pay his ex-wife in exchange for the pleasure of having her live under a separate roof. |
Aluminium Cladding
Neat metallic sheets that, when applied to the sides of a dwelling, confer upon it the ambience of a colossal lunchbox. |
Ambassador
A wealthy person exiled to an alien land for the purpose of throwing parties, presumably with the hope of extracting government secrets from tipsy natives. |
