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Motorcycle
The devil's preferred mode of transport. A noisy, fuel-propelled bike without training wheels, favoured by those for whom automobiles provide insufficient risk to life and limb. |
Motor Racing
A dozen daredevils going round in circles; thousands of cheering spectators waiting for a crack-up. |
Motorway Patrol
A stealthy roadside predator whose prospective victims elude him by slowing down en masse, generally from 15 m.p.h. over the speed limit to 15 m.p.h. below. |
Motorways
An impressive asphalt circulatory system that enables a motorist to drive swiftly from Swansea to Scunthorpe without encountering a single landmark worth stopping for. |
Movies
The pre-eminent storytelling medium of our time, heir to the novel, the epic poem, the folk tale and the drawing of a bison-hunting expedition on a cave wall. A happy excuse to cuddle in a darkened room while your arm falls asleep and your shoes go skraaack as you pull them off the floor. |
Movie Stars
Twentieth-century contribution to the pantheon of world mythology: the fabled hat-check girls and soda jerks who attained immortality on a two-dimensional screen while their three-dimensional bodies went the way of all flesh. Recent generations have appeared decidedly less godlike but more resistant to decay, thanks to daily workouts and regular visits to the plastic surgeon. |
Mud-wrestling
A degrading women's sport developed, curiously enough, since the advent of the feminist movement. |
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. |
Multiculturalism
The reasonable notion that a Navajo medicine man can tell us just as much about human nature as Homer or Rembrandt, coupled with the equally valid belief that today's students will prefer the medicine man. |
Music Video
How film-school cinematographers and posturing postpubescents collaborated to keep rock music on artificial life support long after it should have died naturally. |
Mutants
Creatures with aberrant genes who suddenly appear on the scene, as if from another planet; e.g., fanatical adventurers who climb sheer rock walls with no visible means of support or executives who actually enjoy working eighteen-hour days. |
Mystery
Novel Murder among the upper crust regarded as a source of pleasure by a peculiarly voracious segment of the reading public. |
