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Intellectual
A cerebral soul who values ideas over instincts . . . who would stand his ground during a stampede of woolly mammoths because they're theoretically extinct. For this reason relegated by society to harmless pursuits like marking student essays or formulating foreign policy. |
Investment
A fishing line baited with a herring in the hope of catching a marlin, which briefly flirts and tugs - then escapes with our offering in its belly, prompting us to stick another herring on the hook. |
Interactive Media
That long-awaited opportunity to talk back to your TV, choose the commercials that pop onto your screen, and kill off an obnoxious sitcom character or two. |
Internship
A sleepless ordeal imposed on young doctors for the purpose of weeding out the weak and infirm among them, and eroding the health of the survivors sufficiently to ensure better empathy with their patients in the years to come. |
Interview
A face-to-face confrontation in which the object is to sell one's personal agenda before the droplets of sweat begin to bead visibly on the forehead; when they do, esp. during televised investigations of alleged scam artists, a camera is usually poised to roll in for a close-up. |
IQ
The number that predicts the extent to which one will perform successfully on subsequent IQ tests. |
Irony
Watching Generation Game reruns with a knowing wink so that nobody will suspect we actually like it. A silky insincerity that commonly masks a morbid fear of being judged uncool. |
Irrelevant
Anything that occurred before the first Baby Boomers climbed out of their playpens; e.g., the Treaty of Brest-Litovsk, the War of Jenkins' Ear, Zoroastrianism, the invention of the spinning jenny, cuneiform writing, the reign of Pepin the Short or the discovery of the Americas. |
Ivy League
In the U.S., a confederacy of eight elite private universities that agree to play one another in football each year so that at last a few of them might emerge with winning teams. Notable for conferring lifelong prestige on their alumni and lifelong complexes on thousands of respectable students who never made it past the dean of admissions. |
